The  Kempton-Wace  Letters 


The 
Kempton  - Wace    Letters 

BY 

JACK   LONDON 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  CALL  OF  THE  WILD,"   ETC. 
AND 

ANNA    STRUNSKY 


"  And  of  naught  else  than  Love  would  we 
discourse"  —  DANTE,  Sonnet  II. 


garfe 
THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
1903 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1903, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up,  electrotyped,  and  published  May,  1903.     Reprinted 
September,  1903. 


NotiuootJ 

J.  8.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


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The   Kempton-Wace  Letters 


261334 


KEMPTON-WACE    LETTERS 


FROM  DANE  KEMPTON  TO  HERBERT  WAGE 

LONDON, 

3  A  QUEEN'S  ROAD,  CHELSEA,  S.W. 
August  14,  19 — . 

YESTERDAY  I  wrote  formally,  rising  to 
the  occasion  like  the  conventional  happy 
father  rather  than  the  man  who  believes 
in  the  miracle  and  lives  for  it.  Yesterday  I 
stinted  myself.  I  took  you  in  my  arms,  glad  of 
what  is  and  stately  with  respect  for  the  fulness 
of  your  manhood.  It  is  to-day  that  I  let  myself 
leap  into  yours  in  a  passion  of  joy.  I  dwell  on 
what  has  come  to  pass  and  inflate  myself  with 
pride  in  your  fulfilment,  more  as  a  mother 
would,  I  think,  and  she  your  mother. 

But  why  did  you  not  write  before  ?    After  all, 
the  great  event  was  not  when  you  found  your 

i 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

offer  of  marriage  accepted,  but  when  you  found 
you  had  fallen  in  love.  Then  was  your  hour. 
Then  was  the  time  for  congratulation,  when  the. 
call  was  first  sounded  and  the  reveille  of  Time 
and  About  fell  upon  your  soul  and  the  march  to 
another's  destiny  was  begun.  It  is  always  more 
important  to  love  than  to  be  loved.  I  wish  it 
had  been  vouchsafed  me  to  be  by  when  your 
spirit  of  a  sudden  grew  willing  to  bestow  itself 
without  question  or  let  or  hope  of  return,  when 
the  self  broke  up  and  you  grew  fain  to  beat  out 
your  strength  in  praise  and  service  for  the 
woman  who  was  soaring  high  in  the  blue  wastes. 
You  have  known  her  long,  and  you  must  have 
been  hers  long,  yet  no  word  of  her  and  of  your 
love  reached  me.  It  was  not  kind  to  be  silent. 

Barbara  spoke  yesterday  of  your  fastidious 
ness,  and  we  told  each  other  that  you  had 
gained  a  triumph  of  happiness  in  your  love,  for 
you  are  not  of  those  who  cheat  themselves. 
You  choose  rigorously,  straining  for  the  heart 
of  the  end  as  do  all  rigorists  who  are  also  hedo 
nists.  Because  we  are  in  possession  of  this  bit 
of  data  as  to  your  temperamental  cosmos  we 
can  congratulate  you  with  the  more  abandon. 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

Oh,  Herbert,  do  you  know  that  this  is  a  ram 
pant  spring,  and  that  on  leaving  Barbara  I 
tramped  out  of  the  confines  into  the  green,  hap 
pier,  it  almost  seems,  than  I  have  ever  been  ? 
Do  you  know  that  because  you  love  a  woman 
and  she  loves  you,  and  that  because  you  are 
swept  along  by  certain  forces,  that  I  am  happy 
and  feel  myself  in  sight  of  my  portion  of  im 
mortality  on  earth,  far  more  than  because  of 
my  books,  dear  lad,  far  more  ? 

I  wish  I  could  fly  England  and  get  to  you. 
Should  I  have  a  shade  less  of  you  than  for 
merly,  if  we  were  together  now  ?  From  your  too 
much  green  of  wealth,  a  barrenness  of  friend 
ship  ?  It  does  not  matter ;  what  is  her  gain 
cannot  be  my  loss.  One  power  is  mine, — 
without  hindrance,  in  freedom  and  in  right,  to 
say  to  Ellen's  son,  "  Godspeed  ! "  to  place  Hes 
ter  Stebbins's  hand  in  his,  and  bid  them  forth  to 
the  sunrise,  into  the  glory  of  day ! 

Ever  your  devoted  father, 

DANE  KEMPTON. 


[3] 


II 

FROM  HERBERT  WAGE  TO  DANE  KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA. 
September  3,  19 — . 

HERE  I  am,  back  in  the  old  quarters 
once  more,  with  the  old  afternoon 
climb  across  the  campus  and  up  into 
the  sky,  up  to  the  old  rooms,  the  old  books, 
and  the  old  view.  You  poor  fog-begirt  Dane 
Kempton,  could  you  but  have  lounged  with  me 
on  the  window  couch,  an  hour  past,  and  watched 
the  light  pass  out  of  the  day  through  the  Golden 
Gate  and  the  night  creep  over  the  Berkeley 
Hills  and  down  out  of  the  east !  Why  should 
you  linger  on  there  in  London  town  ?  We 
grow  away  from  each  other,  it  seems  —  you 
with  your  wonder-singing,  I  with  my  joyful 
science. 

Poesy  and  economics !     Alack !  alack !     How 
did  I  escape  you,  Dane,  when  mind  and  mood 

[4] 


FROM    WAGE   TO   KEMPTON 

you  mastered  me  ?  The  auguries  were  fair.  I, 
too,  should  have  been  a  singer,  and  lo,  I  strive 
for  science.  All  my  boyhood  was  singing,  what 
of  you ;  and  my  father  was  a  singer,  too,  in 
his  own  fine  way.  Dear  to  me  is  your  likening 
of  him  to  Waring.  —  "  What's  become  of  War 
ing  ?  "  He  was  Waring.  I  can  think  of  him 
only  as  one  who  went  away,  "  chose  land  travel 
or  seafaring." 

Gwynne  says  I  am  sometimes  almost  a  poet 
—  Gwynne,  you  know,  Arthur  Gwynne,  who 
has  come  to  live  with  me  at  The  Ridge.  "  If 
it  were  not  for  your  dismal  science,"  he  is  sure 
to  add ;  and  to  fire  him  I  lay  it  to  the  defects 
of  early  training.  I  know  he  thinks  that  I 
never  half  appreciated  you,  and  that  I  do  not 
appreciate  you  now.  If  you  will  recollect,  you 
praised  his  verses  once.  He  cherishes  that 
praise  amongst  his  sweetest  treasures.  Poor 
dear  good  old  Gwynne,  tender,  sensitive,  shrink 
ing,  with  the  face  of  a  seraph  and  the  heart  of  a 
maid.  Never  were  two  men  more  incongruously 
companioned.  I  love  him  for  himself.  He  tol 
erates  me,  I  do  secretly  believe,  because  of  you. 
He  longs  to  meet  you,  —  he  knew  you  well 

[5] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

through  my  father,  —  and  we  often  talk  you 
over.  Be  sure  at  every  opportunity  I  tear  off 
your  halo  and  trundle  it  about.  Trust  me,  you 
receive  scant  courtesy. 

How  I  wander  on.  My  pen  is  unruly  after 
the  long  vacation  ;  my  thought  yet  wayward, 
what  of  the  fever  of  successful  wooing.  And 
besides,  .  .  .  how  shall  I  say  ?  .  .  .  such  was 
the  gracious  warmth  of  your  letter,  of  both 
your  letters,  that  I  am  at  a  loss.  I  feel  weak, 
inadequate.  It  almost  seems  as  though  you 
had  made  a  demand  upon  something  that  is 
not  in  me.  Ah,  you  poets  !  It  would  seem 
your  delight  in  my  marriage  were  greater  than 
mine.  In  my  present  mood,  it  is  you  who 
are  young,  you  who  love ;  I  who  have  lived 
and  am  old. 

Yes,  I  am  going  to  be  married.  At  this 
present  moment,  I  doubt  not,  a  million  men 
and  women  are  saying  the  same  thing.  Hewers 
of  wood  and  drawers  of  water,  princes  and 
potentates,  shy-shrinking  maidens  and  brazen 
faced  hussies,  all  saying,  "  I  am  going  to  be 
married."  And  all  looking  forward  to  it  as  a 
crisis  in  their  lives  ?  No.  After  all,  marriage 

[6] 


FROM   WAGE   TO    KEMPTON 

is  the  way  of  the  world.  Considered  biologically, 
it  is  an  institution  necessary  for  the  perpetua 
tion  of  the  species.  Why  should  it  be  a  crisis  ? 
These  million  men  and  women  will  marry,  and 
the  work  of  the  world  go  on  just  as  it  did  be 
fore.  Shuffle  them  about,  and  the  work  of 
the  world  would  yet  go  on. 

True,  a  month  ago  it  did  seem  a  crisis.  I 
wrote  you  as  much.  It  did  seem  a  disturbing 
element  in  my  life-work.  One  cannot  view 
with  equanimity  that  which  appears  to  be 
totally  disruptive  of  one's  dear  little  system  of 
living.  But  it  only  appeared  so ;  I  lacked 
perspective,  that  was  all.  As  I  look  upon  it 
now,  everything  fits  well  and  all  will  run 
smoothly  I  am  sure. 

You  know  I  had  two  years  yet  to  work  for 
my  Doctorate.  I  still  have  them.  As  you 
see,  I  am  back  to  the  old  quarters,  settled 
down  in  the  old  groove,  hammering  away  at 
the  old  grind.  Nothing  is  changed.  And 
besides  my  own  studies,  I  have  taken  up  an 
assistant  instructorship  in  the  Department  of 
Economics.  It  is  an  ambitious  course,  and  an 
important  one.  I  don't  know  how  they  ever 

[7] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

came  to  confide  it  to  me,  or  how  I  found  the 
temerity  to  attempt  it,  —  which  is  neither  here 
nor  there.  It  is  all  agreed.  Hester  is  a  sensible 
girl. 

The  engagement  is  to  be  long.  I  shall  con 
tinue  my  career  as  charted.  Two  years  from 
now,  when  I  shall  have  become  a  Doctor  of 
Social  Sciences  (and  candidate  for  numerous 
other  things),  I  shall  also  become  a  benedict. 
My  marriage  and  the  presumably  necessary 
honeymoon  chime  in  with  the  summer  vacation. 
There  is  no  disturbing  element  even  there.  Oh, 
we  are  very  practical,  Hester  and  I.  And  we 
are  both  strong  enough  to  lead  each  our  own  lives. 

Which  reminds  me  that  you  have  not  asked 
about  her.  First,  let  me  shock  you  —  she,  too, 
is  a  scientist.  It  was  in  my  undergraduate  days 
that  we  met,  and  ere  the  half-hour  struck  we 
were  quarrelling  felicitously  over  Weismann  and 
the  neo-Darwinians.  I  was  at  Berkeley  at  the 
time,  a  cocksure  junior;  and  she,  far  maturer 
as  a  freshman,  was  at  Stanford,  carrying  more 
culture  with  her  into  her  university  than  is  given 
the  average  student  to  carry  out. 

Next,  and  here  your  arms  open  to  her,  she  is 

[8] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

a  poet.  Preeminently  she  is  a  poet  —  this  must 
be  always  understood.  She  is  the  greater  poet, 
I  take  it,  in  this  dawning  twentieth  century, 
because  she  is  a  scientist;  not  in  spite  of  being 
a  scientist  as  some  would  hold.  How  shall  I 
describe  her  ?  Perhaps  as  a  George  Eliot,  fused 
with  an  Elizabeth  Barrett,  with  a  hint  of  Huxley 
and  a  trace  of  Keats.  I  may  say  she  is  some 
thing  like  all  this,  but  I  must  say  she  is  some 
thing  other  and  different.  There  is  about  her 
a  certain  lightsomeness,  a  glow  or  flash  almost 
Latin  or  oriental,  or  perhaps  Celtic.  Yes,  that 
must  be  it  —  Celtic.  But  the  high-stomached 
Norman  is  there  and  the  stubborn  Saxon.  Her 
quickness  and  fine  audacity  are  checked  and 
poised,  as  it  were,  by  that  certain  conservatism 
which  gives  stability  to  purpose  and  power  to 
achievement.  She  is  unafraid,  and  wide-look 
ing  and  far-looking,  but  she  is  not  over-looking. 
The  Saxon  grapples  with  the  Celt,  and  the  Nor 
man  forces  the  twain  to  do  what  the  one  would 
not  dream  of  doing  and  what  the  other  would 
dream  beyond  and  never  do.  Do  you  catch  me  ? 
Her  most  salient  charm  is,  I  think,  her  perfect 
poise,  her  exquisite  adjustment. 

[9] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

Altogether  she  is  a  most  wonderful  woman, 
take  my  word  for  it.  And  after  all  she  is  de 
scribed  vicariously.  Though  she  has  published 
nothing  and  is  exceeding  shy,  I  shall  send  you 
some  of  her  work.  There  will  you  find  and 
know  her.  She  is  waiting  for  stronger  voice 
and  sings  softly  as  yet.  But  hers  will  be  no 
minor  note,  no  middle  flight.  She  is  —  well, 
she  is  Hester.  In  two  years  we  shall  be  mar 
ried.  Two  years,  Dane.  Surely  you  will  be 
with  us. 

One  thing  more;  in  your  letter  a  certain 
undertone  which  I  could  not  fail  to  detect.  A 
shade  less  of  me  than  formerly  ?  —  I  turn  and 
look  into  your  face  —  Waring's  handiwork  you 
remember — his  painter's  fancy  of  you  in  those 
golden  days  when  I  stood  on  the  brink  of  the 
world,  and  you  showed  me  the  delights  of  the 
world  and  the  way  of  my  feet  therein.  So  I 
turn  and  look,  and  look  and  wonder.  A  shade 
less  of  me,  of  you  ?  Poesy  and  economics ! 
Where  lies  the  blame? 

HERBERT. 


[10] 


Ill 

FROM  DANE  KEMPTON  TO  HERBERT  WAGE 

LONDON, 
September  30,  19 — . 

IT  is  because  you  know  not  what  you  do  that 
I  cannot  forgive  you.  Could  you  know  that 
your  letter  with  its  catalogue  of  advantages 
and  arrangements  must  offend  me  as  much  as  it 
belies  (let  us  hope)  you  and  the  woman  of  your 
love,  I  would  pardon  the  affront  of  it  upon  us 
all,  and  ascribe  the  unseemly  want  of  warmth 
to  reserve  or  to  the  sadness  which  grips  the 
heart  when  joy  is  too  palpitant.  But  something 
warns  me  that  you  are  unaware  of  the  chill  your 
words  breathe,  and  that  is  a  lapse  which  it  is 
impossible  to  meet  with  indulgence. 

"  He  does  not  love  her,"  was  Barbara's  quick 
decision,  and  she  laid  the  open  letter  down  with 
a  definiteness  which  said  that  you,  too,  are  laid 
out  and  laid  low.  Your  sister's  very  wrists  can 
be  articulate.  However,  I  laughed  at  her  and 


KEMPTON-WACE    LETTERS 

she  soon  joined  me.  We  do  not  mean  to  be  ex 
travagant  with  our  fears.  Who  shall  prescribe 
the  letters  of  lovers  to  their  sisters  and  foster- 
fathers  ?  Yet  there  are  some  things  their  letters 
should  be  incapable  of  saying,  and  amongst 
them  that  love  is  not  a  crisis  and  a  rebirth,  but 
that  it  is  common  as  the  commonplace,  a  hit  or 
miss  affair  which  "  shuffling  "  could  not  affect. 

Barbara  showed  me  your  note  to  her.  "  Had 
I  written  like  this  of  myself  and  Earl  — " 

"You  could  not,"   I  objected. 

"  Then  Herbert  should  have  been  as  little  able 
to  do  it,"  she  deduced  with  emphasis.  Here 
I  might  have  told  her  that  men  and  women  are 
races  apart,  but  no  one  talks  cant  to  Barbara. 
So  I  did  not  console  her,  and  it  stands  against 
you  in  our  minds  that  on  this  critical  occasion 
you  have  baffled  us  with  coldness. 

An  absence  of  six  years,  broken  into  twice  by 
a  brief  few  months,  must  work  changes.  When 
Barbara  called  your  letter  unnatural,  she  forgot 
how  little  she  knows  what  is  natural  to  you. 
She  and  I  have  been  wont  to  predetermine  you, 
your  character,  foothold,  and  outlook,  by  —  say 
by  the  fact  that  you  knew  your  Wordsworth 
[12] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

and  that  you  knew  him  without  being  able  to 
take  for  yourself  his  austere  peace.  Youth 
which  lives  by  hope  is  riven  by  unrest. 

"  I  made  no  vows ;  vows  were  made  for  me, 
Bond  unknown  to  me  was  given 

That  I  should  be,  else  sinning  greatly, 
A  dedicated  spirit." 

That  pale  sunrise  seen  from  Mt.  Tamalpais  and 
your  voice  vibrant  to  fierceness  on  the  "  else 
sinning  greatly,"  —  to  me  the  splendour  of  rose 
on  piled-up  ridges  of  mist  spoke  all  for  you,  so 
dear  have  you  always  been.  It  rested  on  the 
possible  wonder  of  your  life.  It  threw  you 
into  the  scintillant  Dawn  with  an  abandon  meet 
to  a  son  of  Waring. 

Tell  me,  do  you  still  read  your  Wordsworth 
on  your  knees  ?  I  am  bent  with  regret  for  the 
time  when  your  mind  had  no  surprises  for  me, 
when  the  days  were  flushed  halcyon  with  my 
hope  in  you.  I  resent  your  development  if  it 
is  because  of  it  that  you  speak  prosaically  of  a 
prosaic  marriage  and  of  a  honeymoon  simulta 
neous  with  the  Degree.  I  think  you  are  too  well 
pleased  with  the  simultaneousness. 


KEMPTON-WACE    LETTERS 

Yet  the  fact  of  the  letter  is  fair.  It  cannot 
be  that  the  soul  of  it  is  not.  Hester  Stebbins  is 
a  poet.  I  lean  forward  and  think  it  out  as  I 
did  some  days  ago  when  the  news  came.  I 
conjure  up  the  look  of  love.  If  the  woman  is 
content  (how  much  more  than  content  the  feel 
ing  she  bounds  with  in  knowing  you  hers  as 
she  is  yours) ,  what  better  test  that  all  is  well  ? 
I  conjure  up  the  look  of  love.  It  is  thus  at 
meeting  and  thus  at  parting.  Even  here,  to 
night,  when  all  is  chill  and  hard  to  understand, 
I  catch  the  flash  and  the  warmth,  and  what  I 
see  restores  you  to  me,  but  how  deep  the  plum 
met  of  my  mind  needed  to  sound  before  it 
reached  you.  It  is  because  you  permitted  your 
self  to  speak  when  silence  had  expressed  you 
better. 

Show  me  the  ideally  real  Hester  Stebbins, 
the  spark  of  fire  which  is  she.  The  storms 
have  not  broken  over  her  head.  She  will  laugh 
and  make  poetry  of  her  laughter.  If  before 
she  met  you  she  wept,  that,  too,  will  help  the 
smiling.  There  is  laughter  which  is  the  echo 
of  a  Miserere  sobbed  by  the  ages.  Men  chuckle 
in  the  irony  of  pain,  and  they  smile  cold,  les- 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

soned  smiles  in  resignation ;  they  laugh  in  for- 
getfulness  and  they  laugh  lest  they  die  of 
sadness.  A  shrug  of  the  shoulders,  a  widening 
of  the  lips,  a  heaving  forth  of  sound,  and  the 
life  is  saved.  The  remedy  is  as  drastic  as  are 
the  drugs  used  for  epilepsy,  which  in  quelling 
the  spasm  bring  idiocy  to  the  patient.  If  we 
are  made  idiots  by  our  laughter,  we  are  paying 
dearly  for  the  privilege  of  continuing  in  life. 

Hester  shall  laugh  because  she  is  glad  and 
must  tell  her  joy,  and  she  will  not  lose  it  in 
the  telling.  Greet  her  for  me  and  hasten  to 
prove  yourself,  for 

"  The  Poet,  gentle  creature  that  he  is, 
Hath  like  the  Lover,  his  unruly  times  ; 
His  fits  when  he  is  neither  sick  nor  well, 
Though  no  distress  be  near  him  but  his  own 
Unmanageable  thoughts." 

You  will  judge  by  this  letter  that  I  am  neither 
sick  nor  well,  and  that  I  reach  for  a  distress 
which  is  not  near.  If  I  were  Merchant  rather 
than  Poet,  it  would  be  otherwise  with  me. 

DANE. 


IV 

FROM  HERBERT  WAGE  TO  DANE  KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA. 

October  27,  19 — . 

DO  I  still  read  my  Wordsworth  on  my 
knees  ?     Well,  we  may  as  well  have  it 
out.     I  have  foreseen  this  day  so  long 
and  shunned  it  that  now  I  meet  it  almost  with 
extended  hands.     No,  I  do  not  read  my  Words 
worth  on   my  knees.     My  mind   is  filled  with 
other  things.     I  have  not  the  time.     I  am  not 
the  Herbert  Wace  of  six  years  gone.     It  is  fair 
that  you  should  know  this ;  fair,  also,  that  you 
should   know  the   Herbert  Wace   of  six  years 
gone  was   not  quite  the  lad  you  deemed  him. 
There  is  no  more  pathetic  and  terrible  thing 
than  the  prejudice  of  love.     Both  you  and  I  have 
suffered  from  it.     Six  years  ago,  ay,  and  before 
that,  I  felt  and  resented  the  growing  difference 
between  us.     When  under  your  spell,  it  seemed 
[16] 


FROM   WAGE   TO    KEMPTON 

that  I  was  born  to  lisp  in  numbers  and  devote 
myself  to  singing,  that  the  world  was  good  and 
all  of  it  fit  for  singing.  But  away  from  you, 
even  then,  doubts  faced  me,  and  I  knew  in 
vague  fashion  that  we  lived  in  different  worlds. 
At  first  in  vague  fashion,  I  say ;  and  when  with 
you  again,  your  spell  dominated  me  and  I  could 
not  question.  You  were  true,  you  were  good, 
I  argued,  all  that  was  wonderful  and  glorious ; 
therefore,  you  were  also  right.  You  mastered 
me  with  your  charm,  as  you  were  wont  to  mas 
ter  those  who  loved  you. 

But  there  came  times  when  your  sympathy 
failed  me  and  I  stood  alone  on  outlooks  I  had 
achieved  alone.  There  was  no  response  from 
you.  I  could  not  hear  your  voice.  I  looked 
down  upon  a  real  world ;  you  were  caught  up 
in  a  beautiful  cloudland  and  shut  away  from 
me.  Possibly  it  was  because  life  of  itself  ap 
pealed  to  you,  while  to  me  appealed  the  me 
chanics  of  life.  But  be  it  as  it  may,  yours  was 
a  world  of  ideas  and  fancies,  mine  a  world  of 
things  and  facts. 

Enters  here  the  prejudice  of  love.  It  was  the 
lad  that  discovered  our  difference  and  concealed ; 

c  [17] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

it  was  the  man  who  was  blind  and  could  not  dis 
cover.  There  we  erred,  man  and  boy ;  and  here, 
both  men  now,  we  make  all  well  again. 

Let  me  be  explicit.  Do  you  remember  the 
passion  with  which  I  read  the  "  Intellectual  De 
velopment  of  Europe  "  ?  I  understood  not  the 
tithe  of  it,  but  I  was  thrilled.  My  common  sense 
was  thrilled,  I  suppose  ;  but  it  was  all  very  joy 
ous,  gripping  hold  of  the  tangible  world  for  the 
first  time.  And  when  I  came  to  you,  warm 
with  the  glow  of  adventure,  you  looked  blankly, 
then  smiled  indulgently  and  did  not  answer. 
You  regarded  my  ardour  complacently.  A 
passing  humour  of  adolescence,  you  thought; 
and  I  thought :  "  Dane  does  not  read  his  Draper 
on  his  knees."  Wordsworth  was  great  to  me; 
Draper  was  great  also.  You  had  no  patience 
wjth  him,  and  I  know  now,  as  I  felt  then,  your 
Consistent  revolt  against  his  materialistic  phi 
losophy. 

Only  the  other  day  you  complained  of  a  letter 
of  mine,  calling  it  cold  and  analytical.  That  I 
should  be  cold  and  analytical  despite  all  the 
prodding  and  pressing  and  moulding  I  have 
received  at  your  hands,  and  the  hands  of  War- 
[18] 


FROM   WAGE  TO   KEMPTON 

ing,  marks  only  more  clearly  our  temperamental 
difference ;  but  it  does  not  mark  that  one  or  the 
other  of  us  is  less  a  dedicated  spirit.  If  I  have 
wandered  away  from  the  warmth  of  poesy  and 
become  practical,  have  you  not  remained  and 
become  confirmed  in  all  that  is  beautifully  im 
practical  ?  If  I  have  adventured  in  a  new 
world  of  common  things,  have  you  not  lingered 
in  the  old  world  of  great  and  impossible  things  ? 
If  I  have  shivered  in  the  gray  dawn  of  a  new  day, 
have  not  you  crouched  over  the  dying  embers 
of  the  fire  of  yesterday  ?  Ah,  Dane,  you  can 
not  rekindle  that  fire.  The  whirl  of  the  world 
scatters  its  ashes  wide  and  far,  like  volcanic 
dust,  to  make  beautiful  crimson  sunsets  for  a 
time  and  then  to  vanish. 

None  the  less  are  you  a  dedicated  spirit,  priest 
that  you  are  of  a  dying  faith.  Your  prayers  a*"* 
futile,  your  altars  crumbling,  and  the  light  flickeicy 
and  drops  down  into  night.  Poetry  is  empty 
these  days,  empty  and  worthless  and  dead.  All 
the  old-world  epic  and  lyric-singing  will  not  put 
this  very  miserable  earth  of  ours  to  rights.  So 
long  as  the  singers  sing  of  the  things  of  yester 
day,  glorifying  the  things  of  yesterday  and 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

lamenting  their  departure,  so  long  will  poetry 
be  a  vain  thing  and  without  avail.  The  old 
world  is  dead,  dead  and  buried  along  with  its 
heroes  and  Helens  and  knights  and  ladies  and 
tournaments  and  pageants.  You  cannot  sing 
of  the  truth  and  wonder  of  to-day  in  terms  of 
yesterday.  And  no  one  will  listen  to  your  sing 
ing  till  you  sing  of  to-day  in  terms  of  to-day. 

This  is  the  day  of  the  common  man.  Do  you 
glorify  the  common  man  ?  This  is  the  day  of 
the  machine.  When  have  you  sung  of  the 
machine  ?  The  crusades  are  here  again,  not 
the  Crusades  of  Christ  but  the  Crusades  of  the 
Machine  —  have  you  found  motive  in  them  for 
your  song  ?  We  are  crusading  to-day,  not  for 
the  remission  of  sins,  but  for  the  abolition  of  sin 
ning,  of  economic  and  industrial  sinning.  The 
crusade  to  Christ's  sepulchre  was  paltry  com 
pared  with  the  splendour  and  might  of  our 
crusade  to-day  toward  manhood.  There  are 
millions  of  us  afoot.  In  the  stillness  of  the 
night  have  you  never  listened  to  the  trampling 
of  our  feet  and  been  caught  up  by  the  glory  and 
the  romance  of  it  ?  Oh,  Dane  !  Dane  !  Our 
captains  sit  in  council,  our  heroes  take  the  field, 

[20] 


FROM   WAGE   TO    KEMPTON 

our  fighting  men  are  buckling  on  their  harness, 
our  martyrs  have  already  died,  and  you  are 
blind  to  it,  blind  to  it  all ! 

We  have  no  poets  these  days,  and  perforce 
we  are  singing  with  our  hands.  The  walking 
delegate  is  a  greater  singer  and  a  finer  singer 
than  you,  Dane  Kempton.  The  cold,  analytical 
economist,  delving  in  the  dynamics  of  society,  is 
more  the  prophet  than  you.  The  carpenter  at 
his  bench,  the  blacksmith  by  his  forge,  the 
boilermaker  clanging  and  clattering,  are  all 
warbling  more  sweetly  than  you.  The  sledge- 
wielder  pours  out  more  strength  and  certitude 
and  joy  in  every  blow  than  do  you  in  your 
whole  sheaf  of  songs.  Why,  the  very  socialist 
agitator,  hustled  by  the  police  on  a  street  cor 
ner  amid  the  jeers  of  the  mob,  has  caught  the 
romance  of  to-day  as  you  have  not  caught  it  and 
where  you  have  missed  it.  He  knows  life  and 
is  living.  Are  you  living,  Dane  Kempton  ? 

Forgive  me.  I  had  begun  to  explain  and 
reconcile  our  difference.  I  find  I  am  lecturing 
and  censuring  you.  In  defending  myself,  I 
offend.  But  this  I  wish  to  say :  We  are  so 
made,  you  and  I,  that  your  function  in  life  is  to 

[21] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

dream,  mine  to  work.  That  you  failed  to  make 
a  dreamer  of  me  is  no  cause  for  heartache  and 
chagrin.  What  of  my  practical  nature  and  ana 
lytical  mind,  I  have  generalized  in  my  own  way 
upon  the  data  of  life  and  achieved  a  different 
code  from  yours.  Yet  I  seek  truth  as  passion 
ately  as  you.  I  still  believe  myself  to  be  a 
dedicated  spirit. 

And  what  boots  it,  all  of  it  ?  When  the  last 
word  is  said,  we  are  two  men,  by  a  thousand 
ties  very  dear  to  each  other.  There  is  room  in 
our  hearts  for  each  other  as  there  is  room  in  the 
world  for  both  of  us.  Though  we  have  many 
things  not  in  common,  yet  you  are  my  dearest 
friend  on  earth,  you  who  have  been  a  second 
father  to  me  as  well. 

You  have  long  merited  this  explanation,  and 
it  was  cowardly  of  me  not  to  have  made  it  be 
fore.  My  hope  is  that  I  have  been  sufficiently 
clear  for  you  to  understand. 

HERBERT. 


[22] 


FROM  DANE  KEMPTON  TO  HERBERT  WAGE 

LONDON, 

3  A  QUEEN'S  ROAD,  CHELSEA,  S.W. 
November  16,  19 — . 

YOU  sigh  "  Poesy  and  Economics,"  sup 
plying  the  cause  and  thereby  admitting 
the  fact.  I  wish  you  had  shown  some 
reluctance  to  see  my  meaning,  that  you  had  pre 
ferred  to  waive  the  matter  on  the  ground  of  in 
sufficient  data,  that  you  had  been  less  eager  to 
ferret  out  the  science  of  the  thing.  Do  you 
remember  how  your  boy's  respect  rose  for  little 
Barbara  whenever  she  cried  when  too  readily 
forgiven  ?  "  She  dreads  a  double  standard," 
you  explained  to  me  with  generous  heat.  You 
sympathized  with  her  fear  lest  I  demand  less  of 
her  than  of  you,  honouring  her  insistence  on  an 
equality  of  duty  as  well  as  of  privilege.  Is  the 
man  Herbert  less  proud  than  the  child  Barbara, 
that  you  speak  of  a  temperamental  difference 
and  ask  for  a  special  dispensation  ? 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

You  are  not  in  love  (this  you  say  in  not  gain 
saying  my  attack  on  you,  and  so  far  I  under 
stand),  because  you  are  a  student  of  Econom 
ics.  At  the  last  I  stop.  What  is  this  about 
economics  and  poesy?  About  your  emancipa 
tion  from  my  riotously  lyric  sway  ?  The  hand 
of  the  forces  by  which  you  have  been  moulded 
cannot  detain  you  from  going  out  upon  the  love- 
quest.  The  fact  of  your  preference  for  Draper 
cannot  forestall  your  spirit's  need  of  love. 
There  are  many  codes,  but  there  is  one  law, 
binding  alike  on  the  economist  and  poet.  It 
springs  out  of  the  common  and  unappeasable 
hunger,  commanding  that  love  seek  love  through 
night  to  day  and  through  day  to  night. 

Yet  it  is  possible  to  put  oneself  outside  the 
pale  of  the  law,  to  refuse  the  gift  of  life  and  snap 
the  tie  between  time  and  space  and  creature.  It 
is  possible  to  be  too  emaciated  for  interest  or 
feeling.  The  men  and  women  of  the  People 
know  neither  love  nor  art  because  they  are  too 
weary.  They  lie  in  sleep  prostrate  from  great 
fatigue.  Their  bodies  are  too  much  tried  with 
the  hungers  of  the  body  and  their  spirits  too 
dimly  illumined  with  the  hope  of  fair  chances. 


FROM   KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

It  is  also  possible  to  fill  oneself  so  full  with  an 
interest  that  all  else  is  crowded  out.  You  have 
done  this.  Like  the  cobbler  who  is  a  cobbler 
typically,  the  teacher  who  is  a  pedagogue,  the 
physician  and  the  lawyer  who  are  pathologists 
merely,  you  are  a  fanatic  of  a  text.  You  are  in 
the  toils  of  an  idea,  the  idea  of  selection,  as  I 
well  know,  and  you  exploit  it  like  a  drudge. 
When  a  man  finds  that  he  cannot  deal  in  petro 
leum  without  smelling  of  it,  it  is  time  that  he 
turn  to  something  else.  Every  man  is  engaged 
in  the  cause  of  keeping  himself  whole,  in  watch 
ing  himself  lest  his  man  turn  machine,  in  watch 
ing  lest  the  outside  world  assail  the  inner. 
Nature  spares  the  type,  but  the  individual  must 
spare  himself.  He  is  strong  who  is  sensitive 
and  who  responds  subtly  to  everything  in  his 
environment,  but  his  response  must  be  charac 
teristic  ;  he  must  sustain  his  personality  and  be 
come  more  himself  through  the  years.  He 
alone  is  vital  in  the  social  scheme  who  lets 
nothing  in  him  atrophy  and  who  persists  in 
being  varied  from  all  others  in  the  scale  of 
character  to  the  degree  of  variability  that  was 
his  at  the  beginning. 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

I  read  in  your  letter  nothing  but  a  decision  to 
stop  short  and  give  over,  as  if  you  had  strength 
for  no  more  than  your  book  and  your  theory ! 
You  have  become  slave  to  a  small  point  of 
inquiry,  and  you  call  it  the  advance  to  a  new 
time.  "The  crusade  is  on,"  you  say.  Coro 
nation  rites  for  the  commoners  and  destruction 
to  superstition.  I  put  my  hand  out  to  you  in 
joy.  The  joy  is  in  unholy  worship  of  a  fetish, 
the  pain  that  there  is  no  joy  also  deference 
to  a  fetish.  Your  creed  thunders  "  Thou 
shalt  not."  Love  is  a  thing  of  yesterday.  No 
room  for  anything  that  intimately  concerns  the 
self.  But  what  are  the  apostles  of  the  young 
thought  preaching  if  it  is  not  the  right  of  men 
to  their  own,  and  what  would  it  avail  them  to 
come  into  their  own  if  life  be  stripped  of 
romance  ? 

I  am  dissatisfied  because  you  are  willing  to 
live  as  others  must  live.  You  should  stay  aris 
tocrat.  Ferdinand  Lassalle  dressed  with  ele 
gance  for  his  working-men  audiences,  with  the 
hope,  he  said,  of  reminding  them  that  there  was 
something  better  than  their  shabbiness.  You 
are  of  the  favoured,  Herbert.  It  devolves  upon 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

you  to  endear  your  life  to  yourself.  You  do 
not  agree  with  me.  You  do  not  believe  that 
love  is  the  law  which  controls  freedom  and  life. 
Slave  to  your  theory  and  rebel  to  the  law,  you 
lose  your  soul  and  imperil  another's. 

"  Gently  !  Gently  !  "  I  say  to  myself.  Old 
sorrows  and  wrongs  oppress  me  and  I  grow 
harsh.  My  heat  only  helps  to  convince  you 
that  my  position  is  not  based  on  the  rational 
tightness  you  hold  so  essential  and  that  therefore 
it  is  unlivable.  I  will  state  calmly,  then,  that  it 
is  wrong  to  marry  without  love.  "  For  the  per 
petuation  of  the  species  "  — that  is  noble  of  you ! 
So  you  strip  yourself  of  the  thousand  years  of 
civilization  that  have  fostered  you,  you  abandon 
your  prerogative  as  a  creature  high  in  the  scale 
of  existence  to  obey  an  instinct  and  fulfil  a 
function  ?  You  say :  "  These  men  and  women 
will  marry,  and  the  work  of  the  world  go  on  just 
as  it  did  before.  Shuffle  them  about  and  the 
work  of  the  world  would  yet  go  on."  And  you 
are  content.  You  feel  no  need  of  anything  dif 
ferent  from  this  condition. 

Believe  me,  Herbert,  these  million  men  and 
women  will  not  let  you  shuffle  them  about. 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

There  are  forces  stronger  than  force,  shadows 
more  real  than  reality.  We  know  that  the  need 
of  the  anhungered  for  the  one  friend,  one  com 
rade,  one  mate,  is  good.  We  honour  the  love 
that  persists  in  loving.  More  beautiful  than 
starlight  is  the  face  of  the  lover  when  the  Voice 
and  the  Vision  enfold  him.  The  race  is  conse 
crated  to  the  worship  of  idea,  and  the  lover  who 
lays  his  all  on  the  altar  of  romance  (which  is  idea) 
is  at  one  with  the  race.  The  arms  of  the  unloved 
girl  close  about  the  formless  air  and  more  real 
than  her  loneliness  and  her  sorrowjs  the  imagined 
embrace,  the  awaited  warm,  close  pressure  of 
the  hands,  the  fancied  gaze.  What  does  it  mean? 
What  secret  was  there  for  Leonardo  in  Mona 
Lisa's  smile,  what  for  him  in  the  motion  of 
waters  ?  You  cannot  explain  the  bloom,  the 
charm,  the  smile  of  life,  that  which  rains  sunshine 
into  our  hearts,  which  tells  us  we  are  wise  to  hope 
and  to  have  faith,  which  buckles  on  us  an  armour 
of  activity,  which  lights  the  fires  of  the  spirit, 
which  gives  us  Godhead  and  renders  us  indom 
itable.  Comparative  anatomy  cannot  reason  it 
down.  It  is  sensibility,  romance,  idea.  It  is  a 
fact  of  life  toward  which  all  other  facts  make. 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

For  the  flush  of  rose-light  in  the  heavens,  the 
touch  of  a  hand,  the  colour  and  shape  of  fruit, 
the  tears  that  come  for  unnamed  sorrows,  the 
regrets  of  old  men,  are  more  significant  than  all 
the  building  and  inventing  done  since  the  first 
social  compact. 

Forgive  my  tediousness.  I  have  flaunted 
these  truisms  before  you  in  order  to  exorcise 
that  modern  slang  of  yours  which  is  more  false 
than  the  overstrained  forms  of  a  feudal  France. 
To  shut  out  glory  is  not  to  be  practical.  You 
are  not  adjusting  your  life  artistically;  there  is 
too  much  strain,  too  little  warmth,  too  much  self- 
complacence.  I  see  that  you  are  really  younger 
than  I  thought.  The  world  never  censures  the 
crimes  of  the  spirit.  You  are  safe  from  the 
world's  tongue  lashings,  and  in  that  safety  is  the 
danger  against  which  my  friendship  warns  you. 

I  have  been  reading  Hester's  poems,  and  I 
know  that  she  is  like  them,  nervous,  vibrant, 
throbbing,  sensitive.  I  have  been  reading  your 
letters,  and  I  think  her  soul  will  escape  yours. 
If  you  have  not  love  like  hers,  you  have  nothing 
with  which  to  keep  her.  This  I  have  under 
taken  to  say  to  you.  It  is  a  strange  role,  yet 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

conventional.  I  am  the  father  whose  matri 
monial  whims  are  not  met  by  the  son.  The 
stock  measure  is  to  disinherit.  But  the  cause 
of  our  quarrel  is  somewhat  unusual,  and  I  can 
be  neither  so  practical  nor  so  vulgar  as  to  set 
about  making  codicils.  Love  is  of  no  value  to 
financiers ;  there  is  no  bank  for  it  nor  may  it 
be  made  over  in  a  will.  Rather  is  it  carried  on 
in  the  blood,  even  as  Barbara  carried  it  on  into 
the  life  of  her  girl-babe.  Your  sister  keeps  me 
strong  with  the  faith  of  love.  May  God  be 
good  to  her!  It  was  five  years  ago  that  she 
came  to  me  and  whispered,  "  Earl."  When 
she  saw  I  could  not  turn  to  her  in  joy,  she 
leaned  her  little  head  back  against  the  roses  of 
the  porch  and  wept,  more  than  was  right,  I 
fear,  for  a  girl  just  betrothed.  Earl  was  a 
cripple  and  poor  and  helpless,  but  Barbara 
knew  better  than  we,  for  she  knew  how  to  give 
herself.  Poor  little  one,  whom  nobody  congrat 
ulated  !  She  sends  you  and  Hester  her  love, 
infolding  you  both  in  her  eager  tenderness. 

DANE. 


[30] 


VI 

FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

LONDON, 
November  19,  19 — . 

METAPHYSICS    is    contagious.      I 
caught  it  from  Barbara,  and  I  can 
not  resist  the  impulse  to  pass  it  on, 
and  to  you  of  all  others. 

The  mood  leapt  upon  Barbara  out  of  the 
pages  of  "  Katia,"  a  story  by  Tolstoy.  To 
my  mind,  it  is  a  painful  tale  of  lovers  who  out 
live  their  love,  killing  it  with  their  own  hands, 
but  the  author  -means  it  to  be  a  happily  ending 
novel.  Tolstoy  attempts  to  show  that  men  and 
women  can  find  happiness  only  when  they  grow 
content  to  give  over  seeking  love  from  one 
another.  They  may  keep  the  memory  but 
must  banish  the  hope.  "  Hereafter,  think  of 
me  only  as  the  father  of  your  children,"  and 
the  woman  who  had  pined  for  that  which  had 
been  theirs  in  the  beginning  of  their  union 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

weeps  softly,  and  agrees.  Tolstoy  calls  this 
peace,  but  for  Barbara  and  me  this  gain  is  loss, 
this  end  an  end  indeed,  replete  with  all  the 
tragedy  of  ending. 

I  found  Barbara  to-day  on  the  last  page  of 
"  Katia,"  and  much  disturbed.  "  Dear,  I  saw  a 
spirit  break,"  she  said.  I  waited  before  asking 
whose,  and  when  I  did,  she  answered,  That 
of  three-quarters  of  the  world.  The  ghost  of 
a  Dream  walked  to-day  —  when  after  the  spirit 
broke,  I  saw  it  —  and  myself  and  my  Earl  van 
ished  in  shadow.  We  and  our  love  thinned 
away  before  the  thought-shape." 

"Your  dreaming,  Barbara,  can  scarce  be 
better  than  your  living." 

We  looked  long  at  each  other.  She  knew 
herself  a  happy  woman,  yet  to-day  the  ghost 
had  walked  in  the  light,  and  her  eyes  were  not 
held,  and  she  saw.  Even  her  life  was  not  suffi 
cient,  even  her  plans  were  paltry,  even  her 
heart's  love  was  cramped.  Such  times  of  see 
ing  come  to  happy  men  and  to  happy  women. 
Barbara  was  reading  the  opinions  of  the  world 
and  the  acceptances  of  the  world,  and  in  dis 
liking  them  she  came  to  doubt  herself.  Perhaps 

[32] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

she,  too,  should  be  less  at  peace,  she  too  may 
be  amongst  Pharisees  a  Pharisee. 

"  In  the  midst  of  the  breaking  of  spirit,  how 
can  I  know  ?  "  she  demanded.  "  Love  is  sure," 
I  prompted,  my  hand  on  her  forehead.  "  Earl 
and  I  are  sure,  dear,"  she  laughed  low,  and  a 
drift  of  sobbing  swept  through  the  music ;  "  it 
is  not  that  we  are  in  doubt  about  ourselves,  but 
sometimes,  like  to-day,  you  understand,  one 
finds  oneself  bitten  by  the  sharp  tooth  of  the 
world,  and  a  despair  courses  through  the  veins 
and  blinds  the  eyes,  and  then,  in  the  midst  of 
the  bitterest  throe,  comes  a  great  visioning." 

I  heard  her  and  understood,  and  my  heart 
leapt  as  it  had  not  done  for  long.  Think  of  it, 
Herbert,  fifty-three  and  still  young !  When  was 
it  that  I  last  fluttered  with  joy  ?  Ah,  yes,  that 
time  the  summer  and  the  woods  had  a  great 
deal  to  do  with  it,  and  a  few  words  spoken  by  a 
boy.  I  think  Barbara's  majesty  of  attainment 
through  vicarious  breaking  of  spirit  a  greater 
cause  for  rejoicing. 

And  then,  in  the  midst  of  the  bitterest  throe, 
came  a  great  visioning.  When  pain  is  good  and 
to  be  thanked  for,  how  good  life  is !  By  this 

*  [33] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

alone  may  you  know  the  proportion  and  the 
value  of  the  good  of  being.  Three-quarters  of 
the  world  are  broken  spirited,  but  from  out  the 
wreckage  a  thought-shape,  and  it  is  well.  The 
Vision  fastens  upon  us,  and  what  was  full  seems 
shrunken,  what  whole  and  of  all  time  a  passing 
bit,  an  untraceable  flash.  And  that  is  well,  for 
the  dream  recalls  the  hope,  and  the  heart  grows 
hardy  with  hoping  and  dreaming. 

So  Barbara. 

And  you  ?  You  do  not  repine  because  of 
these  things.  Let  the  Grand  Mujik  mutter  a 
thousand  heresies,  let  three-quarters  of  the 
world  accept  and  live  them,  you  would  not 
think  the  unaspiring  three-quarters  broken 
spirited.  You  would  hail  them  right  practical. 
And  if  you  held  a  thought  as  firmly  as  your 
sister  holds  the  thought  of  love,  and  you  found 
yourself  alone  in  your  esteem  of  it,  you  would 
part  from  it  and  go  over  to  the  others.  You 
would  not  be  the  fanatic  your  sister  is,  to  stay 
so  much  the  closer  by  it  that  of  necessity  she 
must  doubt  her  own  allegiance,  fearing  in  her 
devotion  that,  without  knowing  it,  she,  too,  is 
cold  and  but  half  alive.  You  would  not  see 

[34] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

visions  that  would  put  your  best  to  shame.  The 
thought-shape  of  the  more  you  could  be,  were 
you  and  the  whole  world  finer  and  greater, 
would  not  walk  before  you.  You  would  rest  con 
tent  and  assured,  and — I  regret  your  assurance. 
Always  yours, 

DANE  KEMPTON. 


[35] 


VII 

FROM  HERBERT  WAGE  TO  DANE  KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 

December  6,  19 — . 

NO,  I  am  not  in  love.     I  am  very  thank 
ful  that  I  am  not.     I  pride  myself  on 
the  fact.     As  you  say,  I  may  not  be 
adjusting  my  life  artistically  to  its  environment 
(there  is  room  for  discussion  there),  but  I  do 
know  that  I  am  adjusting  it  scientifically.     I  am 
arranging  my  life  so  that  I  may  get  the  most 
out  of  it,  while  the  one  thing  to  disorder  it, 
worse  than  flood  and  fire  and  the  public  enemy, 
is  love. 

I  have  told  you,  from  time  to  time,  of  my 
book.  I  have  decided  to  call  it  "  The  Economic 
Man."  I  am  going  over  the  proofs  now,  and 
my  brain  is  in  perfect  working  order.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  is  Professor  Bidwell,  who  is 
likewise  correcting  proofs.  Poor  devil,  he  is  in 

[36] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

despair.  He  can  do  nothing  with  them.  "  I 
positively  cannot  think,"  he  complains  to  me, 
his  hair  rumpled  and  face  flushed.  He  did 
not  answer  my  knock  the  other  day,  and  I  came 
upon  him  with  the  neglected  proofs  under  his 
elbows  and  his  absent  gaze  directed  through 
window  and  out  of  doors  to  some  rosy  cloudland 
beyond  my  ken.  "  It  will  be  a  failure,  I  know  it 
will,"  he  growled  to  me.  "  My  brain  is  dull.  It 
refuses  to  act.  I  cannot  imagine  what  has  come 
over  me."  But  I  could  imagine  very  easily. 
He  is  in  love  (madly  in  love  with  what  I  take 
to  be  a  very  ordinary  sort  of  girl),  and  expects 
shortly  to  be  married.  "  Postpone  the  book  for 
a  time,"  I  suggested.  He  looked  at  me  for  a 
moment,  then  brought  his  fist  down  on  the  gen 
eral  disarray  with  a  thumping  "  I  will !  "  And 
take  my  word  for  it,  Dane,  a  year  hence,  when 
the  very  ordinary  girl  greets  him  with  the  ma 
tronly  kiss  and  his  fever  and  folly  have  left  him, 
he  will  take  up  the  book  and  make  a  success 
of  it. 

Of  course  I  am  not  in  love.  I  have  just  come 
back  from  Hester  —  I  ran  down  Saturday  to 
Stanford  and  stopped  over  Sunday.  Time  did 

[37] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

not  pass  tediously  on  the  train.  I  did  not  look 
at  my  watch  every  other  minute.  I  read  the 
morning  papers  with  interest  and  without  impa 
tience.  The  scenery  was  charming  and  I  was 
unaware  of  the  slightest  hurry  to  reach  my  des 
tination.  I  remember  noting,  when  I  came  up 
the  gravel  walk  between  the  rose-bushes,  that 
my  heart  was  not  in  my  mouth  as  it  should  have 
been  according  to  convention.  In  fact,  the  sun 
was  uncomfortable,  and  I  mopped  my  brow  and 
decided  that  the  roses  stood  in  need  of  trimming. 
And  really,  you  know,  I  had  seen  brighter  days, 
and  fairer  views,  and  the  world  in  more  beauti 
ful  moods. 

And  when  Hester  stood  on  the  veranda  and 
held  out  her  hands,  my  heart  did  not  leap  as 
though  it  were  going  to  part  company  with  me. 
Nor  was  I  dizzy  with  — rapture,  I  believe.  Nor 
did  all  the  world  vanish,  and  everything  blot 
out,  and  leave  only  Hester  standing  there,  lips 
curved  and  arms  outstretched  in  welcome.  Oh, 
I  saw  the  curved  lips  and  outstretched  arms, 
and  all  the  splendid  young  womanhood  swaying 
there,  and  I  was  pleased  and  all  that ;  but  I  did 
not  think  it  too  wonderful  and  impossible  and 

[38] 


FROM   WAGE   TO   KEMPTON 

miraculous  and  the  rest  of  the  fond  rubbish  I 
am  sure  poor  Bidwell  thinks  when  his  eyes  are 
gladdened  by  his  ordinary  sort  of  girl  when  he 
calls  upon  her. 

What  a  comely  young  woman,  is  what  I 
thought  as  I  pressed  Hester's  hands ;  and  none 
of  the  ordinary  sort,  either.  She  has  health  and 
strength  and  beauty  and  youth,  and  she  will 
certainly  make  a  most  charming  wife  and  ex 
cellent  mother.  Thus  I  thought,  and  then  we 
chatted,  had  lunch,  and  passed  a  delightful  after 
noon  together  —  an  afternoon  such  as  I  might 
pass  with  you,  or  any  good  comrade,  or  with 
my  wife. 

All  of  which  rational  Tightness  is,  I  know,  dis 
tasteful  to  you,  Dane.  And  I  confess  I  depict 
it  with  brutal  frankness,  failing  to  give  credit  to 
the  gentler,  tenderer  side  of  me.  Believe  me,  I 
am  very  fond  of  Hester.  I  respect  and  admire 
her.  I  am  proud  of  her,  too,  and  proud  of  my 
self  that  so  fine  a  creature  should  find  enough 
in  me  to  be  willing  to  mate  with  me.  It  will  be 
a  happy  marriage.  There  is  nothing  cramped 
or  narrow  or  incompatible  about  it.  We  know 
each  other  well  —  a  wisdom  that  is  acquired  by 

[39] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

lovers  only  after  marriage,  and  even  then  with 
the  likelihood  of  it  being  a  painful  wisdom.  We, 
on  the  other  hand,  are  not  blinded  by  love  mad 
ness,  and  we  see  clearly  and  sanely  and  are 
confident  of  our  ability  to  live  out  the  years 
together. 

HERBERT. 


[40] 


CHAPTER  VIII 
FROM   THE   SAME  TO  THE   SAME 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 

December  u,  19 — . 

I  HAVE  been  thinking  about  your  romance 
and  my  rational  Tightness,  and  so  this 
letter. 

"  One  loves  because  he  loves ;  this  explanation 
is,  as  yet,  the  most  serious  and  most  decisive  that 
has  been  found  for  the  solution  of  this  problem." 
I  do  not  know  who  has  said  this,  but  it  might 
well  have  been  you.  And  you  might  well  say 
with  Mile,  de  Scuderi :  "Love  is  —  /  know  not 
what;  which  comes  —  I  know  not  when;  which 
is  formed — I know  not  how  ;  which  enchants  — 
/  know  not  by  what ;  and  which  ends  —  I  know 
not  when  or  why" 

You  explain  love  by  asserting  that  it  is  not  to 
be  explained.  And  therein  lies  our  difference. 
You  accept  results ;  I  search  for  causes.  You 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

stop  at  the  gate  of  the  mystery,  worshipful  and 
content.  I  go  on  and  through,  flinging  the 
gate  wide  and  formulating  the  law  of  the  mys 
tery  which  is  a  mystery  no  longer.  It  is  our 
way.  You  worship  the  idea;  I  believe  in  the 
fact.  If  the  stone  fall,  the  wind  blow,  the  grass 
and  green  things  sprout;  if  the  inorganic  be 
vitalized,  and  take  on  sensibility,  and  perform 
functions,  and  die;  if  there  be  passions  and 
pains,  dreams  and  ambitions,  flickerings  of  in 
finity  and  glimmerings  of  Godhead  —  it  is  for 
you  to  be  smitten  with  the  wonder  of  it  and  to 
memorialize  it  in  pretty  song,  while  for  me 
remains  to  classify  it  as  so  much  related  phe 
nomena,  so  much  play  and  interplay  of  force 
and  matter  in  obedience  to  ascertainable  law. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  men :  the  wonderers 
and  the  doers ;  the  feelers  and  the  thinkers ; 
the  emotionals  and  the  intellectuals.  You  take 
an  emotional  delight  in  living ;  I  an  intellectual 
delight.  You  feel  a  thing  to  be  beautiful  and 
joyful ;  I  seek  to  know  why  it  is  beautiful  and 
joyful.  You  are  content  that  it  is,  no  matter 
how  it  came  to  be ;  I,  when  I  have  learned  why, 
strive  that  we  may  have  more  beautiful  and  joy- 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

f ul  things.  "  The  bloom,  the  charm,  the  smile 
of  life  "  is  all  too  wonderful  for  you  to  know  ;  to 
me  it  is  chiefly  wonderful  because  I  may  know. 
Oh,  well,  it  is  an  ancient  quarrel  which  neither 
you  nor  I  shall  outlive.  I  am  rational,  you  are 
romantic,  —  that  is  all  there  is  to  it.  You  are 
more  beautiful ;  I  am  more  useful ;  and  though 
you  will  not  see  it  and  will  never  be  able  to  see 
it,  you  and  your  beauty  rest  on  me.  I  came  into 
the  world  before  you,  and  I  made  the  way  for 
you.  I  was  a  hunter  of  beasts  and  a  fighter  of 
men.  I  discovered  fire  and  covered  my  naked 
ness  with  the  skins  of  animals.  I  builded  cun 
ning  traps,  and  wove  branches  and  long  grasses 
and  rushes  and  reeds  into  the  thatch  and  roof- 
tree.  I  fashioned  arrows  and  spears  of  bone 
and  flint.  I  drew  iron  from  the  earth,  and 
broke  the  first  ground,  and  planted  the  first 
seed.  I  gave  law  and  order  to  the  tribe  and 
taught  it  to  fight  with  craft  and  wisdom.  I 
enabled  the  young  men  to  grow  strong  and 
lusty,  and  the  women  to  find  favour  with  them ; 
and  I  gave  safety  to  the  women  when  their 
progeny  came  forth,  and  safety  to  the  progeny 
while  it  gathered  strength  and  years. 

[43] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

I  did  many  things.  Out  of  my  blood  and 
sweat  and  toil  I  made  it  possible  that  all  men 
need  not  all  the  time  hunt  and  fish  and  fight. 
The  muscle  and  brain  of  every  man  were  no 
longer  called  to  satisfy  the  belly  need.  And 
then,  when  of  my  blood  and  sweat  and  toil  I 
had  made  room,  you  came,  high  priest  of  mys 
tery  and  things  unknowable,  singer  of  songs 
and  seer  of  visions. 

And  I  did  you  honour,  and  gave  you  place  by 
feast  and  fire.  And  of  the  meat  I  gave  you  the 
tenderest,  and  of  furs  the  softest.  Need  I  say 
that  of  women  you  took  the  fairest  ?  And  you 
sang  of  the  souls  of  dead  men  and  of  immortal 
ity,  of  the  hidden  things,  and  of  the  wonder ; 
you  sang  of  voices  whispering  down  the  wind, 
of  the  secrets  of  light  and  darkness,  and  the 
ripple  of  running  fountains.  You  told  of  the 
powers  that  pulsed  the  tides,  swept  the  sun 
across  the  firmament,  and  held  the  stars  in  their 
courses.  Ay,  and  you  scaled  the  sky  and 
created  for  me  the  hierarchy  of  heaven. 

These  things  you  did,  Dane ;  but  it  was  I  who 
made  you,  and  fed  you,  and  protected  you. 
While  you  dreamed  and  sang,  I  laboured  sore. 

[44] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

And  when  danger  came,  and  there  was  a  cry  in 
the  night,  and  women  and  children  huddling  in 
fear,  and  strong  men  broken,  and  blare  of  trum 
pets  and  cry  of  battle  at  the  outer  gate  —  you 
fled  to  your  altars  and  called  vainly  on  your 
phantoms  of  earth  and  sea  and  sky.  And  I  ? 
I  girded  my  loins,  and  strapped  my  harness  on, 
and  smote  in  the  fighting  line ;  and  died,  per 
chance,  that  you  and  the  women  and  children 
might  live. 

And  in  times  of  peace  you  throve  and  waxed 
fat.  But  only  by  our  brain  and  blood  did  we 
men  of  the  fighting  line  make  possible  those 
times  of  peace.  And  when  you  throve,  you 
looked  about  you  and  saw  the  beauty  of  the 
world  and  fancied  yet  greater  beauty.  And 
because  of  me  your  fancy  became  fact,  and  mar 
vels  arose  in  stone  and  bronze  and  costly  wood. 

And  while  your  brows  were  bright,  and  you 
visioned  things  of  the  spirit,  and  rose  above 
time  and  space  to  probe  eternity,  I  concerned 
myself  with  the  work  of  head  and  hand.  I 
employed  myself  with  the  mastery  of  matter. 
I  studied  the  times  and  seasons  and  the  crops 
and  made  the  earth  fruitful.  I  builded  roads 

[45] 


•" 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

and  bridges  and  moles,  and  won  the  secrets  of 
metals  and  virtues  of  the  elements.  Bit  by  bit, 
and  with  great  travail,  I  conquered  and  enslaved 
the  blind  forces.  I  builded  ships  and  ventured 
the  sea,  and  beyond  the  baths  of  sunset  found 
new  lands.  I  conquered  peoples,  and  organized 
nations  and  knit  empires,  and  gave  periods  of 
peace  to  vast  territories. 

And  the  arts  of  peace  flourished,  and  you 
multiplied  yourself  in  divers  ways.  You  were 
priest  and  singer  and  dancer  and  musician. 
You  expressed  your  fancies  in  colours  and  metals 
and  marbles.  You  wrote  epics  and  lyrics  —  ay, 
as  you  to-day  write  lyrics,  Dane  Kempton.  And 
I  multiplied  myself.  I  kept  hunger  afar  off, 
and  fire  and  sword  from  your  habitation,  and  the 
bondsmen  in  obedience  under  you.  I  solved 
methods  of  government  and  invented  systems 
of  jurisprudence.  Out  of  my  toil  sprang  forms 
and  institutions.  You  sang  of  them  and  were 
the  slave  of  them,  but  I  was  the  maker  of  them 
and  the  changer  of  them. 

You  worshipped  at  the  shrine  of  the  idea.  I 
sought  the  fact  and  the  law  behind  the  fact.  I 
was  the  worker  and  maker  and  liberator.  You 

[46] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

were  conventional.  Tradition  bound  you.  You 
were  full  bellied  and  content,  and  you  sang  of 
the  things  that  were.  You  were  mastered  by 
dogma.  Did  the  Mediaeval  Church  say  the 
earth  was  flat,  you  sang  of  an  earth  that  was 
flat,  and  danced  and  made  your  little  shows 
on  an  earth  that  was  flat.  And  you  helped  to 
bind  me  with  chains  and  burn  me  with  fire  when 
my  facts  and  the  laws  behind  my  facts  shook 
your  dogmas.  Dante's  highest  audacity  could 
not  transcend  a  material  inferno.  Milton  could 
not  shake  off  Lucifer  and  hell. 

You  were  more  beautiful.  But  not  only  was 
I  more  useful,  but  I  made  the  way  for  you 
that  there  might  be  greater  beauty.  You  did 
not  reck  of  that.  To  you  the  heart  was  the 
seat  of  the  emotions.  I  formulated  the  circula 
tion  of  the  blood.  You  gave  charms  and  indul 
gences  to  the  world ;  I  gave  it  medicine  and 
surgery.  To  you,  famine  and  pestilence  were 
acts  of  providence  and  punishment  of  sin ;  I 
made  the  world  a  granary  and  drained  its  cities. 
To  you  the  mass  of  the  people  were  poor  lost 
wretches  who  would  be  rewarded  in  paradise  or 
baked  in  hell.  You  could  offer  them  no  earthly 

[47] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

happiness  or  decency.  Forsooth,  beggars  as 
well  as  kings  were  of  divine  right.  But  I  shat 
tered  the  royal  prerogatives  and  overturned  the 
thrones  of  the  one  and  lifted  the  other  some 
what  out  of  the  dirt. 

Nor  is  my  work  done.  With  my  inventions 
and  discoveries  and  rational  enterprise,  I  draw 
the  world  together  and  make  it  kin.  The  uplift 
is  but  begun.  And  in  the  great  world  I  am  mak 
ing  I  shall  be  as  of  old  to  you,  Dane.  I,  who 
have  made  you  and  freed  you,  shall  give  you 
space  and  greater  freedom.  And,  as  of  old,  we 
shall  quarrel  as  when  first  you  came  to  me  and 
found  me  at  my  rude  earth-work.  You  shall  be 
the  scorn er  of  matter,  and  I  the  master  of  mat 
ter.  You  may  laugh  at  me  and  my  work,  but 
you  shall  not  be  absent  from  the  feast  nor  shall 
your  voice  be  silent.  For,  when  I  have  con 
quered  the  globe,  and  enthralled  the  elements, 
and  harnessed  the  stars,  you  shall  sing  the  epic 
of  man,  and  as  of  old  it  shall  be  of  the  deeds  I 
have  done. 

HERBERT. 


[48] 


IX 

FROM  DANE  KEMPTON  TO  HERBERT  WAGE 

3  A  QUEEN'S  ROAD,  CHELSEA,  S.W. 
December  28,  19 — . 

THE  curtain  is  rung  down  on  an  illusion, 
but  it  rises  again  on  another,  this  time, 
as  before,  with  the  look  of  the  absolute 
Good  and  True  upon  it.     It  is  because  we  are 
at  once  actor  and  spectator  that  we  find  no  fault 
with  blinking  sight  and  slothful  thought.    We 
are  finite  branded  and  content,  except  during  the 
shrill,  undermining  moments  when  the  orchestra 
is  tuning  up..    "Thus  we  half-men  struggle." 

I  follow  your  letter  and  wonder  whether  your 
illusions  have  qualities  of  beauty  which  escape 
me.  I  give  you  the  benefit  of  every  doubt 
which  it  is  possible  for  me  to  harbour  with  re 
gard  to  my  own  system  of  illusions.  You  glorify 
the  crowd  practical.  You  attach  yourself  to 
the  ranks  that  carried  thought  into  action.  You 
inspire  yourself  with  rugged  strength  by  dwell- 

E  [49] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

ing  on  the  achievements  of  ruggedness,  forget 
ting  that  the  progress  of  the  world  is  not 
marshalled  by  those  who  work  with  line  and 
rule.  It  was  not  his  crew,  but  Columbus,  who 
discovered  America.  The  crew  stood  between 
the  Old  and  the  New,  as  indeed  the  crew  always 
does.  Between  the  idealist  and  his  hope  were 
hosts  of  practical  enemies  whom  he  had  to  sub 
due  before  he  reached  land.  But  I  must  not 
fall  into  your  mistake  of  dividing  men  into  cate 
gories.  Men  are  not  either  intellectual  or  emo 
tional  ;  they  are  both.  It  is  a  rounded  not  an 
angular  development  which  we  follow.  Feeling 
and  thinking  are  not  mutually  exclusive,  and  the 
great  personality  feels  deeply  because  he  thinks 
highly,  feels  keenly  because  he  sees  widely. 
Common  sense  is  not  incompatible  with  uncom 
mon  sense,  evil  does  not  of  necessity  attend 
beauty,  nor  weakness  the  strength  of  genius. 

I  shall  sing  of  the  deeds  you  have  done  if  your 
deeds  are  worthy  of  song.  I  shall  sing  a  Song  of 
the  Sword,  too,  should  the  sword  "thrust  through 
the  fatuous,  thrust  through  the  fungous  brood." 
Whatever  helps  the  races  to  better  life  sings 
itself  into  racial  lore,  and  I  alone  shall  not  refuse 

[50] 


FROM    KEMPTON    TO   WAGE 

the  tribute.  When  you  come  to  see  that  the 
Iliad  is  as  great  a  gift  to  the  race  as  the  doings 
of  Achilles,  that  the  Iliads  are  more  significant 
than  the  doings  they  celebrate,  you  will  cease  to 
classify  men  into  doers  and  singers.  You  will 
cease  to  dishonour  yourself  in  the  eyes  of  the 
singers  with  the  hope  that  in  so  doing  you  gain 
somewhat  elsewhere. 

Professor  Bidwell  is  in  love  and  it  interferes 
with  his  work.  You  have  the  advantage  of  him 
there,  no  doubt.  However,  you  lose  more  than 
you  gain.  You  have  shattered  the  dream  and 
have  awakened.  To  what  ?  What  is  this  reality 
in  which  your  universe  is  hung  ?  Where  shine  the 
stars  of  your  scientific  heaven  ?  By  the  beauty 
of  your  dreaming  alone,  Herbert,  shall  you  be 
judged  and  known.  You  dream  that  you  have 
learned  the  lesson,  solved  the  problem,  pierced 
the  mystery,  and  become  a  prophet  of  matter. 
But  matter  does  not  include  spirit,  so  the  motif 
of  your  dream  grows  all  confused.  Your  race 
epic  omits  the  race.  You  sing  the  branch  and 
the  leaf  rather  than  the  sunlit  and  tenebral 
wood.  Bidwell  thinks  his  ordinary  sort  of  girl 
a  "  lyric  love,  half  angel  and  half  bird,  and  all  a 


.     KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

wonder  and  a  wild  desire."  Bidwell  exaggerates, 
perhaps,  but  unless  he  feels  this  for  his  wife, 
he  has  no  wife.  Barbara  obeyed  the  voice  of 
her  heart.  That  sounds  sentimental,  but  it  is 
none  the  less  a  courageous  thing  to  do.  I  was 
inconsistent  enough  to  be  sorry  because  she 
loved  a  crippled  man.  Bidwell  and  Barbara  are 
wiser  and  happier  than  you  can  be,  Herbert,  than 
you  from  whose  hand  the  map  of  Parnassus 
Hill  has  been  niched. 

Is  there  one  state  of  consciousness  better 
than  another  ?  I  think  yes.  Better  to  have 
long,  youthful  thoughts  and  to  thrill  to  vibrant 
emotions  than  to  grovel  sluggishly ;  better  to 
I  hope  and  dream  and  aspire  and  sway  to  great 
harmonies  than  to  be  blind  and  deaf  and  dumb 
—  better  for  the  type,  better  for  the  immortality 
of  the  w'orld's  soul.  This  to  me  is  a  vital 
thought,  therefore  life  or  death  is  in  the  issue. 
For  the  rest  I  know  not.  By  the  glimmer  of 
light  lent  me,  I  can  but  guess  greatness  and 
descry  vagueness.  You  go  further  and  would 
touch  the  phantasmagorial  veil.  "  Right!  "  I  say, 
and  I  pray,  "God  speed."  But  there  must  be 
intensity.  Are  you  thrilled  ?  Do  you  stretch 

[5*] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

out  your  arms  and  dream  the  beauty?  It  is 
only  when  you  gaze  into  a  reality  empty  of  the 
voices  of  life  that  I  would  wake  you  to  bid  you 
dream  better. 

Well,  Herbert,  I  have  quarrelled  with  you  and 
shall  to  the  end,  I  promise.  I  wish  I  could  take 
you  away,  hide  you  from  your  Hester's  sight, 
and  pour  my  poetic  spleen  out  on  you.  Oh,  I 
shall  torment  you  into  reason  and  passion  ! 
Whatever  you  may  choose  to  be,  you  are  my 
son.  I  must  take  you  and  keep  you  as  you  are, 
of  course,  but  I  choose  to  tell  the  truth  to  you 
though  I  do  love  you  and  hold  you  mine.  Dis 
agreeable  of  me,  but  how  else  ? 

DANE. 


[533 


X 

FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

LONDON, 
Sunday,  January  i,  19 — . 

BEHOLD,  I  have  lived !  I  press  your 
face  to  the  breathing,  stinging  roses 
of  my  days,  and  bid  you  drink  in  the 
sweet  and  throb  with  the  pain.  What  is  my 
philosophy  but  a  translation  of  the  facts  which 
have  stamped  me  ?  Perhaps  if  I  let  you  read 
these  facts,  you  will  the  sooner  come  to  share 
my  consecration  and  my  faith.  I  must  teach 
you  to  know  that  you  are  the  fact  of  my  whole 
tangled  web  of  facts,  and  that  all  that  I  have 
and  am,  and  all  that  might  have  been  I  and 
mine,  stretches  itself  out  in  the  unmarked  path 
which  is  before  you. 

I  take  you  back  with  me  to  the  road,  white 
with  dust,  upon  which  like  a  Viking  and  like  a 
feeble  girl  I  have  travelled.  It  is  not  long,  but 
how  many  paths,  what  byways  and  what  turns  I 

[54] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

What  sudden  glimpses  of  sea  and  sky,  what  in- 
accessibleness  !  Hark,  from  the  wood  on  either 
side  murmurings  of  hope  and  hard  sobbing  of 
despair,  young  laughter  of  joy  and  aged  renun 
ciations  !  See  from  amongst  the  pines  the  fare 
well  gleam  of  a  white  hand.  All  of  it  dear  — 
dearly  bought  and  precious  and  miraculous,  the 
heartache  even  as  the  gladness. 

"  Life  is  worth  living 
Through  every  grain  of  it, 
From  the  foundations 
To  the  last  edge 
Of  the  cornerstone,  death." 

Ay,  through  every  grain  of  it.  Even  that 
morning  in  the  wood,  thirty  years  ago,  when 
your  mother  put  her  hand  in  mine  and  looked 
a  great  pity  into  my  eyes.  Indeed,  she  loved 
me  well,  but  romance  shone  on  the  brow  of 
John  Wace.  For  her  his  face  was  sunlit,  and 
she  needs  must  take  it  between  her  hands  and 
hold  it  forever.  He  was  her  Siegfried,  her 
master.  Thus  the  gods  decreed,  and  we  three 
obeyed.  What  else  was  there  to  do  ?  We  must 
be  honest  before  all,  and  Ellen  did  not  love  me 
any  more,  and  I  must  know  it,  and  wipe  out  a 

ESS] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

past  of  deepest  mutuality,  and  strengthen  and 
console  and  restore  the  woman  whose  hand 
held  mine  while  her  eyes  were  turned  elsewhere. 

Before  that  bright,  black  summer  morning 
which  saw  me  woman-pitied,  I  knew  I  should 
have  to  renounce  her.  Their  souls  rushed  to 
gether  on  their  first  meeting.  John  had  been 
away,  knocking  about  museums  and  colleges, 
and  carrying  on  tempestuous  radical  work.  He 
was  splendidly  picturesque.  I  was  a  youth  of 
twenty -three,  almost  ten  years  his  junior,  a  boy 
full  of  half-defined  aims  and  groping  powers, 
reaching  toward  what  he  had  firm  in  his  grasp. 
Ellen  talked  of  his  coming,  and  she  planned 
that  she  should  meet  this  my  one  friend  in  the 
environment  she  loved  best  —  in  my  rooms, 
whose  atmosphere,  she  declared,  belonged  to  an 
earlier  time  and  place.  (She  found  in  me  Nolly 
Goldsmith  and  all  of  Grub  Street.)  So  they 
met  at  the  tea-table  in  my  study,  and  a  great 
warmth  stole  over  your  father.  He  spoke  with 
out  looking  at  either  of  us,  while  Ellen  looked 
as  if  her  destiny  had  just  begun. 

Without,  it  rained.  I  strode  to  the  window 
and  in  a  dazed  way  stared  at  the  lamp-post 

[56] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

which  was  sticking  out  its  flaming  little  tongue 
to  the  night.  Why  was  I  mocked  ?  There  was 
no  mocking  and  there  should  have  been  no  bit 
terness.  Of  that  there  was  none  either,  after 
a  while. 

Ellen  put  her  hand  on  my  hair,  and  a  strong 
primal  emotion  rose  in  me.  In  that  moment 
civilization  was  as  if  it  had  not  been.  I  reverted 
to  the  primitive.  The  blood  of  forgotten  ances 
tors,  cave-men  and  river-men,  reasoned  me  my 
ethics.  I  turned  to  her,  met  her  flushed  cheek 
and  moved  being  and  the  glory  of  dawning  in 
her  eyes.  I  measured  my  strength  with  hers 
and  your  father's,  Herbert.  Easily,  great 
strength  was  mine  in  my  passion,  easily  I  could 
carry  her  off ! 

You,  too,  have  had  moments  of  upheaval 
when  you  heard  the  growling  of  the  tiger  and 
the  bear,  when  the  brute  crowded  out  the  man. 
Then  your  soul  writhed  in  derision,  you  scoffed 
at  that  which  you  had  held  to  be  the  nobility  of 
the  soul,  and  you  minced  words  satirically  over 
the  exquisiteness  of  the  type  which  we  have 
evolved.  Then  the  experiment  of  life  turned 
farce,  the  heavens  fell  about  your  ears  and 

[57] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

"  Fool ! "  was  upon  your  lips.  Oh,  the  hurri 
cane  that  sweeps  over  the  soul  when  it  is 
cheated  of  its  joy !  In  the  first  instant  of 
Ellen's  indifference,  when  I  felt  myself  pushed 
out  of  her  life,  I  forgot  everything  but  my  de 
sire.  I  could  not  renounce  her.  I  was  in  the 
throes  of  the  passion  for  ownership. 

Gentle  girl  between  whom  and  myself  there 
had  been  naught  but  sweetness  and  fellowship ! 
How  often  had  we  talked  large  (we  were  very 
young !)  of  our  sublimities  and  potentialities, 
how  often  had  we  pictured  tragedies  of  sur 
render  and  greatened  in  the  speaking !  Ah,  it 
should  come  true.  For  her  and  for  me  there 
must  be  miracles,  and  there  were.  So  was  the 
strength  of  the  spirit  proven,  so  was  it  shown  to 
be  "  pure  waft  of  the  Will."  So  was  I  confirmed 
in  the  creed  which  believes  that  to  keep  we 
must  lose,  and  to  live  we  must  die.  So  was  I 
assured  that  there  may  be  but  one  way,  and 
that,  the  way  of  service. 

I  did  not  grip  her  passionately  in  my  arms. 
I  withdrew;  I  did  much  to  make  her  task  of 
leaving  me  an  easy  one.  Were  it  not  for  my 
efforts,  it  would  have  been  harder  for  her  to 

[58] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

obey  a  mandate  which  made  for  my  pain.  She 
could  not  quite  drown  an  old,  Puritan  voice, 
speaking  with  the  authority  of  tradition,  which 
bade  her  hold  to  her  vows.  Yes,  I  made  it 
easy  for  her.  Harrow  my  soul  with  theories  of 
selection  and  survival  if  you  dare ! 

In  those  days  the  spires  of  the  temple  were 
golden,  the  shrine  white.  The  door  was  seen 
from  every  point  in  the  fog-begirt  world.  We 
who  worshipped  knew  not  of  doubt.  Stirred  by 
the  rumbling  organ  tones  of  causes  and  ideas, 
we  immolated  our  lives  gladly.  High  priests  of 
thought,  we  swung  the  censers  and  rose  on  the 
breast  of  the  incense.  Ellen  and  John  and  my 
self  glorified  God  and  enjoyed  Him  forever,  — 
God,  the  Type,  the  Final  Humanity,  the  giant 
Body  Soul  of  man.  In  our  hearts  dwelt  a  reli 
gion  which  compelled  us  to  serve  the  ideal.  We 
strove  to  become  what  organically  we  felt  the 
"  Human  with  his  drippings  of  warm  tears  "  may 
become.  We  were  the  standard-bearers  of  the 
advancing  margin  of  the  world.  We  were  the 
high-water  mark  toward  which  all  the  tides 
forever  make.  We  were  soldiers  and  priests. 

And  so  when  Ellen  loved,  and  lacked  courage 

[59] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

for  her  love,  I  helped  her.  A  past  of  kindness 
and  ardour  riveted  her  to  my  side.  She  knew 
that  we  were  in  feeling  and  fact  divorced  from 
each  other  by  virtue  of  her  stronger  love  for 
John,  yet  did  she  do  battle  with  the  rich  young 
love.  For  two  years  we  had  been  close  ;  she  had 
been  so  much  my  friend,  she  could  not  in  maiden 
charity  seal  for  me  a  so  unwelcome  fate.  I  had 
awakened  her  slumbering  soul  with  my  first  look 
into  the  sphinx  wonder  of  her  eyes.  For  me  she 
had  became  fire  and  dew,  flame  of  the  sun,  and 
flower  of  the  hill.  Without  me  to  help  her  do 
it  she  could  not  leave  me. 

To  the  master  of  matter  this  coping  with 
spiritual  abstractions  must  appear  like  juggling 
with  intellectual  phantasmagoria.  Yet  I  protest 
that  life  is  finally  for  intangible  triumphs.  Un 
named  fragrances  steal  upon  the  senses  and 
the  soul  revels  and  greatens.  Unseen  hands 
draw  us  to  worlds  afar,  and  we  are  gathered  up 
in  the  dignity  of  the  human  spirit.  Unknown 
ideas  attract  and  hold  us,  and  we  take  our  place 
in  the  universe  as  intellectual  factors.  In  giving 
up  Ellen  I  helped  her,  and,  sacredly  better  still, 
I  sent  on  into  a  world  of  vague  thinking  and 
[60] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

weak  acting  the  impulse  of  devotion  to  revealed 
truth. 

She  had  a  sweet  way  of  sitting  low  and  rest 
ing  her  head  on  my  knee.  She  sat  through  one 
whole  day  with  me  thus,  and  for  hours  I  could 
have  thought  her  asleep  were  it  not  for  the  waves 
of  feeling  which  surged  in  her  upturned  face. 
Toward  the  end  she  raised  her  head,  ecstasy  in 
her  eyes  and  on  cheek  and  lip.  "  Dane,  I  love 
you.  Dane !  Dane !  "  The  whole  of  me  was 
caught  up  in  the  accents  of  that  tremulousness. 
She  had  known  John  three  months ;  but  her  love 
for  him  was  young,  it  had  come  unexpectedly, 
it  was  still  unexpressed  and  ineffable.  Her 
yearning  for  him  led  to  softness  toward  me,  and 
though  she  rose  out  of  her  mood  as  one  does 
from  a  dream,  the  hours  when  we  were  like  the 
angels,  all  love  and  all  speech,  were  mine. 
So  much  was  vouchsafed  me. 

Memories  and  echoes,  gusts  of  sweet  breath 
from  the  violets  on  your  mother's  grave  —  the 
prophet  of  matter  will  have  none  of  them,  and, 
I  fear,  will  pity  me  that  I  am  so  much  theirs.  I 
am  yours  also,  dear  lad,  and  I  wish  to  serve  you. 

DANE  KEMPTON. 
[61] 


XI 

FROM  HERBERT  WAGE  TO  DANE  KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 

January  20,  19 — . 

I  DO  not  know  whether  to  laugh  or  weep. 
I  have  just  finished  reading  your  letter, 
and  I  can  hardly  think.     Words  seem  to 
have  lost  their  meaning,  and  words,  used  as  you 
use  them,  are  without  significance.    You  appear 
to  speak  a  tongue  strangely  familiar,  yet  one  I 
cannot  understand.     You  are  unintelligible,  as, 
I  dare  say,  I  am  to  you.  • 

And  small  wonder  that  we  are  unintelligible. 
Our  difference  presents  itself  quite  clearly  to 
the  scientific  mind,  and  somewhat  in  this  fash 
ion  :  Man  acquires  knowledge  of  the  outer 
world  through  his  sensations  and  perceptions. 
Sensation  ends  in  sentiment,  and  perception 
ends  in  reason.  These  are  the  two  sides  of 
man's  nature,  and  the  individual  is  determined 

[«*] 


FROM    WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

and  ruled  by  whichever  side  in  him  happens  to 
be  temperamentally  dominant.  I  have  already 
classed  you  as  a  feeler,  myself  as  a  thinker. 
This  is,  I  think,  true.  You,  I  am  confident,/^/ 
it  to  be  true.  I  reason  why  it  is  true.  You 
accept  it  on  faith  as  true,  lose  sight  of  the  argu 
ment  forthwith,  and  proceed  to  express  it  in 
emotional  terms  —  which  is  to  say  that  you  take 
it  to  heart  and  feel  badly  because  it  happens  to 
be  so. 

You  feign  to  know  this  modern  scientific 
slang,  and  you  are  contemptuous  of  it  because 
you  do  not  know  it.  The  terms  I  use  freight  no 
ideas  to  you.  They  are  sounds,  rhythmic  and 
musical,  but  they  are  not  definite  symbols  of 
thought.  Their  facts  you  do  not  grasp.  For 
instance,  the  prehensile  organs  of  insects,  the 
great  toothed  mandibles  of  the  black  stag-beetle, 
the  amorous  din  of  the  male  cicada  and  the 
muteness  of  his  mate  —  these  are  facts  which 
you  cannot  relate,  one  with  the  other,  nor  can 
you  generalize  upon  them.  Let  me  add  to 
these  related  characters,  and  you  cannot  discern 
the  law  which  is  alike  to  all.  What  to  you  the 
fluttering  moth,  decked  in  gold  and  crimson, 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

brilliant,  iridescent,  splendid?  The  beauty  of 
it  bids  you  bend  to  deity,  otherwise  it  has  no 
worth ;  it  is  a  stimulus  to  religion,  and  that  is 
all.  So  with  the  glowing  incandescence  of  the 
stickleback  and  its  polished  scales  of  silver. 
What  make  you  of  the  hoarse  voice  of  the 
gorilla  ?  Is  not  the  dewlap  of  the  ox  inscru 
table  ?  the  mane  of  the  lion  ?  the  tusks  of  the 
boar  ?  the  musk-sack  of  the  deer  ?  In  the  ame 
thyst  and  sapphire  of  the  peacock's  wing  you 
find  no  rationality ;  to  you  it  is  a  manifestation 
of  the  wonder  which  is  taboo.  And  so  with  the 
cock  bird,  displaying  his  feathered  ruffs  and 
furbelows,  dancing  strange  antics  and  spilling 
out  his  heart  in  song. 

I,  on  the  other  hand,  dare  to  gather  all  these 
phenomena  together,  and  find  out  the  common 
truth,  the  common  fact,  the  common  law,  which 
is  generalization,  which  is  Science.  I  learn 
that  there  are  two  functions  which  all  life  must 
perform :  Nutrition  and  Reproduction.  And  I 
learn  that  in  all  life,  the  performance,  according 
to  time  and  space  and  degree,  is  very  like.  The 
slug  must  take  to  itself  food,  else  it  will  perish ; 
and  so  I.  The  slug  must  procreate  its  kind,  or 

[64] 


FROM   WAGE   TO    KEMPTON 

its  kind  will  perish ;  and  so  I.  The  need  being 
the  same,  the  only  difference  is  in  the  expres 
sion.  In  all  life  come  times  and  seasons  when 
the  individuals  are  awaj«  of  dim  yearnings  and 
blind  compulsions  and  masterful  desires.  The 
senses  are  quickened  and  alert  to  the  call  of 
kind.  And  just  as  the  fish  and  the  reptile 
glimmeringly  adumbrate  man,  so  do  these 
yearnings  and  desires  adumbrate  what  man 
in  himself  calls  "  love,"  spelled  out  all  in  capi 
tals.  I  repeat,  the  need  is  the  same.  From 
the  amoeba,  up  the  ladder  of  life  to  you  and  me, 
comes  this  passion  of  perpetuation.  And  in 
yourself,  refine  and  sublimate  as  you  will,  it  is 
none  the  less  blind,  unreasoning,  and  compelling. 
And  now  we  come  to  the  point.  In  the  devel 
opment  of  life  from  low  to  high,  there  came  a 
dividing  of  the  ways.  Instinct,  as  a  factor  of 
development,  had  its  limitations.  It  culminated 
in  that  remarkable  mechanism,  the  bee-swarm. 
It  could  go  no  farther.  In  that  direction  life  was 
thwarted.  But  life,  splendid  and  invincible,  not 
to  be  thwarted,  changed  the  direction  of  its 
advance,  and  reason  became  the  all-potent  devel 
opmental  factor.  Reason  dawned  far  down  in 

[65] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

the  scale  of  life ;  but  it  culminates  in  man  and 
the  end  is  not  yet. 

The  lever  in  his  arm  he  duplicates  in  wood 
and  steel;  the  lenses  in  his  eyes  in  glass;  the 
visual  impressions  of  his  brain  on  chemically 
sensitized  wood-pulp.  He  is  able,  reasoning 
from  events  and  knowing  the  law,  to  control  the 
blind  forces  and  direct  their  operation.  Having 
ascertained  the  laws  of  development,  he  is  able 
to  take  hold  of  life  and  mould  and  knead  it  into 
more  beautiful  and  useful  forms.  Domestic 
selection  it  is  called.  Does  he  wish  horses  which 
are  fast,  he  selects  the  fastest.  He  studies  the 
physics  of  velocity  in  relation  to  equine  locomo 
tion,  and  with  an  eye  to  withers,  loins,  hocks, 
and  haunches,  he  segregates  his  brood  mares 
and  his  stallions.  And  behold,  in  the  course  of 
a  few  years,  he  has  a  thoroughbred  stock,  swifter 
of  foot  than  any  ever  in  the  world  before. 

Since  he  takes  sexual  selection  into  his  own 
hands  and  scientifically  breeds  the  fish  and  the 
fowl,  the  beast  and  the  vegetable,  why  may  he 
not  scientifically  breed  his  own  kind  ?  The  fish 
and  the  fowl  and  the  beast  and  the  vegetable  obey 
dim  yearnings  and  vague  desires  and  reproduce 
[66] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

themselves.  "  Poor  the  reproduction,"  says  Man 
to  Mother  Nature;  "allow  me."  And  Mother 
Nature  is  thrust  aside  and  exceeded  by  this 
new  creator,  this  Man-god. 

These  yearnings  and  desires  of  the  beast  and 
the  vegetable  are  the  best  tools  nature  has  suc 
ceeded  in  devising.  Having  devised  them,  she 
leaves  their  operation  to  the  blindness  of  chance. 
Steps  in  man  and  controls  and  directs  them. 
For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  life  conscious 
intelligence  forms  and  transforms  life.  These 
yearnings  and  desires,  promptings  of  the  "  abys 
mal  fecundity,"  have  in  man  evolved  into  what 
is  called  "  love."  They  arise  in  instinct  and  sen 
sation  and  culminate  in  sentiment  and  emotion. 
They  master  man,  and  the  intellect  of  man,  as 
they  master  the  beast  and  all  the  acts  of  the 
beast.  And  they  operate  in  the  development 
of  man  with  the  same  blindness  of  chance  that 
they  operate  in  the  development  of  the  beast. 

Now  this  is  the  law :  Love,  as  a  means  for 
the  perpetuation  and  development  of  the  human 
type,  is  very  crude  and  open  to  improvement. 
What  the  intellect  of  man  has  done  with  the 
beast,  the  intellect  of  man  may  do  with  man. 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

It  is  a  truism  to  say  that  my  intellect  is  wiser 
than  my  emotions.  So,  knowing  the  precise 
value  and  use  of  this  erotic  phenomenon,  this 
sexual  madness,  this  love,  I,  for  one,  elect  to 
choose  my  mate  with  my  intellect  Thus  I 
choose  Hester.  And  I  do  truly  love  her,  but  in 
the  intellectual  sense  and  not  the  sense  you  fa 
natically  demand.  I  am  not  seized  with  a  lout 
ish  vertigo  when  I  look  upon  her  and  touch  her 
hand.  Nor  do  I  feel  impelled  to  leave  her  pres 
ence  if  I  would  live,  as  did  Dante  the  presence 
of  Beatrice ;  nor  the  painful  confusion  of  Rous 
seau,  when,  in  the  same  room  with  Madame 
Goton,  he  seemed  impelled  to  leap  into  the 
flaming  fireplace.  But  I  do  feel  for  Hester 
what  happily  mated  men  and  women,  after  they 
have  lived  down  the  passion,  feel  in  the  after 
noon  of  life.  It  is  the  affection  of  man  for 
woman,  which  is  sanity.  It  is  the  sanity  of 
intercourse  which  replaces  love  madness;  the 
sanity  which  comes  upon  sparrows  after  the 
ardour  of  mating,  when  they  leave  off  wrangling 
and  chattering  and  set  soberly  to  work  to  build 
the  nest  for  the  coming  brood. 

Pre-nuptial  love  is  the  madness  of  non-under- 
[68] 


FROM   WAGE  TO   KEMPTON 

standing  and  part-understanding.  Post-nuptial 
affection  is  the  sanity  of  complete  understand 
ing;  it  is  based  upon  reason  and  service  and 
healthy  sacrifice.  The  first  is  a  blind  mating 
of  the  blind ;  the  second,  a  clear  and  open-eyed 
union  of  male  and  female  who  find  enough  h 
common  to  warrant  that  union.  In  a  word, 
and  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word,  it  is  sex 
comradeship.  Pre-nuptial  love  cannot  survive 
marriage  any  considerable  time.  It  is  doomed  in 
exorably  to  flicker  out,  and  when  it  has  flickered 
out  it  must  be  replaced  by  affection,  or  else  the 
parties  to  it  must  separate.  We  well  know  that 
many  men  and  women,  unable  to  build  up  affec 
tion  on  the  ruins  of  love,  do  separate,  or  if  they 
do  not,  continue  to  live  together  in  cold  toler 
ance  or  bitter  hatred. 

Now,  Hester  is  my  mate.  We  have  much  in 
common.  There  is  intellectual,  spiritual,  and 
physical  affinity.  The  caress  of  her  voice  and  the 
feel  of  her  mind  are  pleasurable  to  me ;  like 
wise  the  touch  of  her  hand  (and  you  know  that 
in  the  union  of  man  and  woman  the  higher 
affinities  are  not  possible  unless  there  first  be 
physiological  affinity).  We  shall  go  through 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

life  as  comrades  go,  hand  in  hand,  Hester  and 
I ;  and  great  happiness  will  be  ours.  And  be 
cause  of  all  this  I  say  you  have  no  right  to 
challenge  my  happiness,  and  vex  my  days,  and 
feel  for  me  as  one  dead. 

My  dear,  bewildered  Dane,  come  down  out  of 
the  clouds.  If  I  am  wrong,  I  have  gone  over 
the  ground.  Then  do  you  go  over  that  ground 
with  me  and  show  where  I  am  wrong.  But 
do  not  pour  out  on  me  your  romantic  and  poetic 
spleen.  Confine  yourself  to  the  Fact,  man,  to 
the  irrefragable  Fact. 

HERBERT. 

Ah,  your  later  letter  has  just  arrived.  I  can 
only  say  that  I  understand.  But  withal,  I  am 
pained  that  I  am  not  nearer  to  you.  These 
intellectual  phantasmagoria  rise  up  like  huge 
amorphous  ghosts  and  hold  me  from  you.  I 
cannot  get  through  the  mists  and  glooms  to 
press  your  hand  and  tell  you  how  dear  I  hold 
you.  Do,  Dane,  do  let  us  cease  from  this. 
Let  us  discuss  no  further.  Let  me  care  for 
Hester  in  my  own  way  so  long  as  I  do  no  sin 
and  harm  no  one;  and  be  you  father  to  us, 

[70] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

and  bless  us  who  else  must  go  unblessed.  For 
Hester,  also,  is  fatherless  and  motherless,  and 
you  must  be  to  her  as  you  are  to  me. 

HERBERT. 


XII 
FROM  DANE  KEMPTON  TO  HERBERT  WAGE 

LONDON, 

3  A  QUEEN'S  ROAD,  CHELSEA,  S.W., 
February  10,  19 — . 

SO  we  have  got  into  an  argument !  I  have 
been  poring  over  your  last  two  or  three 
letters,  and  they  read  like  a  set  of  briefs 
for  a  debate.  Doubtless  mine  have  the  same 
forensic  quality.  Our  letters  have  become  re 
buttals,  pure  and  simple.  This  discovery  gave 
my  pen  pause  for  a  week.  It  occurred  to  me 
that  Walt  Whitman  must  have  meant  didactic 
letters  too,  when  he  said  of  the  fretters  of  our 
little  world,  "  They  make  me  sick  talking  of  their 
duty  to  God."  Yet  friend  should  speak  to  friend, 
should  utter  the  Word  than  which  nothing  is 
more  sacred.  "Let  there  be  light,  and  there 
was  light"  —a  ripple  of  light,  and  a  flash,  then 
the  darkness  broke  and  dispersed  from  the  face 
of  the  waters.  It  was  a  trumpet-call  of  words 

[72] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

bringing  drama  into  a  nebulous  creation.  Let 
the  Word  break  up  our  night  and  let  us  not 
only  grant,  but  avow  the  conviction  it  brings  us, 
no  matter  what  the  consequence.  Let  us  wor 
ship  the  irrefragable  fact. 

You  hold  that  marriage  is  an  institution  hav 
ing  for  its  purpose  the  perpetuation  of  the 
species,  and  that  respect  and  affection  are  suffi 
cient  to  bring  two  people  into  this  most  intimate 
possible  relation.  You  also  hold  that  the  busi 
ness  of  the  world,  pressing  hard  upon  men, 
makes  "  love  from  their  lives  a  thing  apart," 
and  that  this  is  as  it  should  be.  Your  letters 
are  an  exposition  and  a  defence  of  what  I  may 
loosely  call  the  practical  theory.  You  show  that 
the  world  is  for  work  and  workers,  and  that  life 
is  for  results  as  seen  in  institutions  and  visible  f 
achievements.  I,  on  the  other  hand,  maintain 
that  it  takes  a  greater  dowry  to  marry  upon  than 
affection,  and  that  men  love  as  intensely  and 
with  as  much  abandon  as  women.  People  love 
in  proportion  to  the  depth  of  their  natures,  and 
the  finest  man  in  the  world  has  an  infinite  capac 
ity  for  giving  and  receiving  love  store.  The 
spell  is  strongest  upon  the  finest. 

[73] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

This,  briefly,  is  what  we  have  been  saying  to 
each  other.  You  attack  my  idealism,  call  me 
dreamer,  and  accuse  me  of  being  out  of  joint 
with  the  time,  which  itself  is  rigorously  in  joint 
with  the  laws  of  growth.  And  I  class  you  with 
the  Philistine  because  of  your  exaggeration  of 
practical  values.  I  hold  that  it  is  gross  to  respect 
the  fact  tangible  at  the  expense  of  the  feeling 
ineffable. 

In  your  last  letter  you  exploit  the  theory 
of  Nutrition  and  Reproduction  with  a  charm 
and  warmth  which  helps  me  see  you  as  I 
have  so  long  known  you,  and  which  tells  me 
again  that  you  are  worth  fighting  for  and 
saving.  But  to  trace  love  to  its  biologic  begin 
ning  is  not  to  deny  its  existence.  Love  has  a 
history  as  significant  as  that  of  life.  When,  eons 
ago,  the  primitive  man  looked  at  his  neighbour 
and  recognized  him  as  a  fellow  to  himself,  con 
sciousness  of  kind  awoke  and  a  cell  was  exploded 
which  functioned  love.  When,  through  the  ages, 
economic  forces  taught  men  the  need  of  mutual 
aid,  when  everywhere  in  life  the  law  of  develop 
ment  charged  men  with  leanings  and  desires 
and  outreachings,  then  the  sway  of  love  began 

[74] 


FROM   KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

in  life.  What  was  subconscious  became  con 
scious,  what,  back  in  the  past,  was  a  mere  adum 
bration  gloried  out  in  Aurora  splendours.  The 
love  of  a  Juliet  is  the  outgrowth  of  natural  pro 
cesses  manifesting  themselves  everywhere  down 
the  scale,  but  it  is  also  the  gift  of  the  last  evolu 
tion,  and  it  speaks  to  us  from  the  topmost  notch 
in  the  scale.  The  charm  of  morning  rests  on 
a  Juliet's  love  because  its  hour  is  young  and  yet 
old,  striking  the  time  of  the  past  and  the  future. 
It  is  thus  that  the  hunger  of  the  race  and  the 
passion  of  the  race  become  in  the  individual  the 
need  for  happiness.  The  need  of  the  race  and 
the  need  of  the  individual  are  at  once  the  same 
and  different. 

What  was  the  point  of  your  letter  ?  That 
sexual  selection  obtains?  I  grant  it.  That  it 
is  incumbent  upon  us  as  intelligent  men  and 
women  to  call  to  the  aid  of  instinct  our  social 
wisdom  ?  I  grant  and  avow  it.  But  our  social 
wisdom  insists  that  we  obey  the  choices  of  in 
stinct  ;  our  social  wisdom  is  only  another  phase 
of  our  refinement,  which,  in  impelling  us  to  a 
love  of  the  beautiful,  does  not  the  less  impel  us 
to  love.  Our  social  wisdom  educates  our  taste 

[75] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

without  lessening  our  taste  for  the  thing.  "  Love 
a  beautiful  person  nobly,  but  be  sure  you  love 
her,"  says  our  social  wisdom  with  interesting 
tautology.  Besides,  you  are  a  heretic  to  your 
own  creed,  Herbert.  It  is  you  who  would  for 
sake  our  present  social  wisdom,  ruling  modern 
men  by  laws  which  obtained  in  primitive  life. 
It  is  you  who  steadily  hark  back  to  the  past, 
and  to  states  of  consciousness  which  were  but 
can  never  be  again.  The  early  facts  of  biology 
cannot  include  that  which  transcends  them. 
To  borrow  from  Ernest  Seton  Thompson,  man  is 
evolved  from  the  lower  orders  in  the  same  way 
that  water  is  changed  into  steam,  and  the  nature 
of  the  change,  when  it  is  effected,  is  as  radical. 
Add  a  number  of  degrees  of  heat  to  water  and 
it  is  still  water.  Let  one  degree  be  wanting  to 
the  necessary  number,  and  the  substance  is  still 
intact.  Add  the  last  degree,  and  water  is  no 
longer  water.  From  water  to  steam  is  a  radi 
cal  change  and  a  transformation. 

You  agree  to  improve  upon  the  beasts  of  the 
fields  and  upon  our  own  race  in  the  past,  and  in 
this  you  go  farther  than  you  have  need  if  mar 
riage  is  for  nothing  else  than  to  serve  the  instinct 

[76] 


FROM   KEMPTON   TO  WAGE 

for  perpetuation.  You  show  some  respect  for 
what  is  natural  and  instinctive,  yet  you  say  that 
all  would  be  as  well  if  individual  choice  had  not 
prevailed,  and  men  and  women  were  "  shuffled 
about."  You  draw  up  a  cold  programme  for 
action  in  affairs  of  the  spirit  and  formulate  a 
code  of  procedure  in  matters  of  the  heart. 

I  have  a  programme  too.  Mine  does  not  break 
with  nature.  On  the  contrary,  it  obeys  every 
instinct  and  listens  to  every  call  on  the  senses. 
My  love  begins  in  my  biologic  self,  grows  witm 
my  growth,  takes  its  hues  from  visioned  sun 
sets  in  corn-flower  skies,  its  grace  from  swaying  ' 
rivers  of  grain  seen  in  dreams.  It  is  for  me 
what  it  is  for  fish  and  fowl,  beast  and  vegetable. 
It  is  my  passion  for  perpetuation,  but  it  is  also 
something  as  different  from  this  as  I  am  dif 
ferent  from  beast  and  vegetable.  My  love  is 
"blind,  unreasoning,  and  compelling,"  and  for 
that  I  trust  it.  I  do  not  conceive  myself  Man- 
god,  therefore  I  do  not  say  to  Nature,  "  Allow 
me."  I  cannot  be  sure  that  when  I  say  it  in 
the  case  of  the  horse,  who  obeys  like  me  "  dim 
yearnings  and  vague  desires,"  I  do  not  sacrifice 
him  to  a  lust  of  my  own.  The  lust  for  owning 

[77] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

and  spoiling  is  hard  to  cope  with.  Perhaps  a 
purer  time  is  near,  when,  upborne  by  a  sense  of 
the  dignity  of  romance  and  the  sacredness  of 
life,  man  will  refrain  from  laying  rough  hands 
on  his  mute  brothers. 

The  romance  which  is  my  proof  of  the  good 
of  being  does  not  rest  on  passion.  The  unclean 
fires  that  consume  the  loutish  and  degenerate 
are  not  of  love.  You  quote  instances  of  the 
hyperphysical  and  hysterical.  The  feeling  that 
I  would  have  you  obey  for  your  soul's  sake  and 
without  which  you  are  but  half  alive,  is  not  the 
blind  passion  of  an  oversexed  sentimentalism. 
Rousseau  was  never  in  love  in  his  life,  though 
to  say  it  were  to  accuse  him  of  perjury. 

One  word  more.  Do  you  wish  to  know  why 
I  care  ?  I  care  because  I  know  you  to  be  of 
those  who  are  capable  of  love.  Probably  it  was 
one  little  twist  in  your  development  that  has 
turned  you  into  alien  ways  of  thinking  and  liv 
ing.  Yes,  and  more  than  for  this  I  care  because 
you  are  the  fulfilment  of  a  sacred  past.  You 
are  the  son  of  my  sacrifice  and  your  mother's 
love. 

I  care  very  much  indeed.     I  do  not  wish  you 


~ 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

to  awake  some  terrible  night  to  find  that  you 
had  ended  your  romance  before  you  had  begun 
it.  I  vex  your  days  and  call  you  dead  ?  It  is 
because  I  know  the  life  that  is  by  the  grace  of 
God  yours,  and  because  I  cannot  bear  to  let  you 
coffin  it.  Herbert,  there  is  misery  when  the 
blood  pales,  and  the  tears  dry  up,  and  the  flame 
of  the  heart  sinks,  and  all  that  is  left  is  a  mem 
ory  of  a  thought  —  a  memory  of  very  long  ago 
when  one  was  young  and  might  have  chosen  to 
live. 

I  am  sorry  we  darken  the  days  for  each  other. 

Your  friend  always, 

DANE  KEMPTON. 


[79-1 


XIII 
FROM   THE  SAME   TO   THE   SAME 

LONDON, 

3  A  QUEEN'S  ROAD,  CHELSEA,  S.W., 
February  12,  19 — . 

BARBARA  and  Earl  celebrated  their 
anniversary  yesterday.  Invitations  were 
sent  out,  the  guests  consisting  of  Mel 
ville  and  myself.  "  Anniversary  of  what  ?  "  we 
asked.  For  answer  we  received  inscrutable 
smiles.  Birthdays  are  accidents  of  fate.  You 
may  regret  the  accident  or  you  may  be  thick 
enough  in  illusion  to  rejoice  over  it,  but  you 
cannot  in  decency  celebrate  an  occurrence 
wholly  independent  of  personal  control  and  yet 
concerning  itself  with  you !  Leave  the  merry 
making  for  appreciative  friends.  So  rules  Bar 
bara.  Not  a  birthday,  then,  nor  the  date  of 
their  marriage.  The  occasion  was  in  some  flash 
struck  from  Being,  the  memory  of  which  enriches 
them,  —  in  a  mood  that  for  an  hour  held  them  in 
[80] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

strong  grasp,  in  the  utterance  of  a  word  charged 
with  destiny,  in  the  avowal  of  their  love  if  their 
love  waited  avowal.  Whatever  the  cause,  they 
honoured  it  with  a  will. 

Barbara's  eyes  flashed,  her  cheeks  were 
sweetly  suffused,  and  her  voice  was  vibrant. 
Earl,  too,  was  at  his  best.  My  heart  loved  this 
man  who  had  lain  all  his  life  with  death.  His 
health  is  at  its  bad  worst  this  winter,  which  fact 
made  of  the  "  Celebration  "  a  rather  heart-rend 
ing  affair.  He  has  been  obliged  to  abandon 
the  Journal,  but  we  hope  he  can  stay  with 
the  school.  Meanwhile,  his  chronic  invalidism 
of  body  and  purse  does  not  too  much  affect  him. 
He  keeps  his  charm  of  tenderness  and  strength. 
He  rivets  his  pupils  to  him  almost  as  he  riveted 
his  Barbara. 

I  have  discovered  my  proof  of  this  couple's 
happiness.  It  is  that  I  have  always  taken  it  for 
granted.  Simple,  is  it  not?  And  absolute. 
Often  in  their  presence  I  catch  myself  imagin 
ing  their  mutual  lives  and  seeing  vaguely  the 
graces  that  each  brings  to  each.  "  How  she 
must  delight  him ! "  I  say.  "  How  his  eyes 
speak  to  her ! "  "  They  can  never  come  to  the 
G  [81] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

end  of  each  other,"  and  so  on.  The  ordinary 
married  couple  so  often  brings  a  sense  of  dis 
tressed  surprise:  "  How  can  these  two  foot  it 
together?"  "  How  did  it  happen?"  "How 
can  it  go  on  ?  " 

Last  night  counted  to  me.  Your  father  and 
I  have  had  such  evenings,  but  I  did  not  think  I 
could  do  it  all  over  again.  We  spoke  with  the 
fire  (and  conceit)  of  young  students,  exciting 
ourselves  with  expired  theories,  hoping  old 
hopes,  smarting  under  blows  that  perhaps  had 
long  ceased  to  fall.  What  then  ?  What  if  we 
were  ill-read  in  the  facts  ?  We  could  not  have 
been  wrong  in  the  feeling.  For  the  old  hope 
that  has  been  proven  vain,  a  new ;  for  the  ancient 
hurt,  a  modern  wrong,  as  great  and  as  crying. 
It  was  good  to  feel  that  we  had  not  grown  too 
wise  to  harbour  thoughts  of  change  and  redress, 
or  too  much  ironed  out  with  doctrine  to  be  re 
signed.  I  confess  it  is  long  since  I  have  eaten 
my  heart  in  fury,  in  impatience,  in  wildness, 
but  last  night  we  awoke  the  radical  in  one 
another.  We  condemned  the  system.  We 
placed  ourselves  outside  the  regime,  refusing 
aught  at  its  hands,  registering  our  protest,  hat- 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

ing  the  inordinate  scheme  of  things  only  as  hotly 
as  we  loved  the  juster  Hand  of  a  future  time. 

It  is  curious  that  we,  offsprings  of  parvenue 
success,  should  be  capable  of  such  repudiation. 
Barbara  accepts  the  Management  without  the 
trouble  of  a  question.  "  What  do  you  know  ? 
What  do  you  know  ? "  the  girl  demands,  a  radi 
ant  little  angel  in  white,  and  a  conservative. 
"  You  must  know  yourselves  in  the  wrong,  else 
would  you  smite  your  way  through  the  world." 

Ah,  Barbara  has  yet  to  learn  that  it  is  hard  to 
live.  It  is  not  so  hard  to  fight,  and  it  is  easy 
to  rest  neutral,  but  to  be  fighter  and  bearer  both, 
to  stand  staunch,  holding  ever  to  the  issue,  and 
yet,  without  tameness,  to  take  rebuff  and  wait, 
there's  the  true  course  and  the  heroic.  It  is 
difficult  when  one  has  been  conquered  to  know 
it.  It  is  difficult  to  honour  an  outgrown  ideal, 
which  cost  us,  nevertheless,  comfort  and  prestige 
—  prizes  which  youth  scorns  and  which  oncom 
ing  age,  pathetically  enough,  holds  dear.  It  is 
difficult  to  pull  up  when  driving  too  fast  and  too 
far,  when  galloping  toward  fanaticism,  and  it 
is  impossible  to  whip  oneself  into  passion  and 
martyrdom.  It  is  difficult  to  live,  little  Barbara. 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

For  me  it  is  also  difficult  to  report  a  social 
function.  At  this  one  Browning  presided,  for 
Melville  took  up  "  Caponsacchi "  and  read  it  to  us. 
That  voice  of  his  is  in  itself  an  interpretation, 
but  Browning  needs  interpreting  less  than  any 
other  man  who  wrote  great  poems,  because  he 
wrote  the  greatest.  It  was  four  in  the  morning 
when  the  "  O  great,  just,  good  God  !  Miserable 
me !  "  of  the  soldier-saint  fell  upon  our  ears. 
How  we  had  listened  !  Earl  steadily  paced  the 
floor,  Barbara  leaned  her  cheek  upon  my  hand. 
Her  soul  was  doing  battle,  and  so  was  mine. 
We  were  all  fighting  the  gallant  fight.  Read 
"  Pompilia  "  and  you  are  filled  with  reverence, 
read  "  Caponsacchi "  and  you  are  caught  up  by 
the  spirit  of  action.  You  must  rise  and  forth 
to  burn  your  way  like  he,  though  you  may  have 
been  too  weary  in  spirit  before  to  answer  to 
your  name  when  opportunity  called  roll. 

It  was  Earl  who  broke  the  silence  caused  by  the 
inner  tumult.  In  a  dreamy  voice,  his  eyes  very 
eager  and  intent,  he  told  us  how  at  one  time  he 
had  gone  up  a  hill  that  faced  the  house  in  which 
he  lived.  A  hard  rain  was  driving,  he  fell  at 
every  step  up  the  slippery  steepness,  but  at 

[84] 


— 7-31 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

every  step  the  beauty  of  it  became  more  and. 
more  wondrous,  hardly  bearable.  The  little  vil 
lage  sank  lower  and  lower,  and  about  him  were . 
soft  hills,  graceful  and  verdant,  a  stretch  of  water 
lying  dark  under  the  clouded  sky,  and'the  moun 
tain  gray  and*  watchful  in  the  "distance.  It"  was 
then,  in  the  chill  ©f  a  January  rain,  cm  an  oak- 
clad  hill  of  a-  western  spot,  that  he 'recognized 
the  dear  features  of  the  Mother,  knew  "her  his 
as  hers  he  was,  and  loved  her  with  passion.  The 
sea  is  vast  and  wondrous,  but  it  is  alien.  It 
holds  you  apart;  it  is  not  of  you.  But  the  gentle 
earth  with  her  undulating  form  and  the  growing 
life  in  her  lap,  soothes  with  wordless  harmonies. 
It  was  then  that  he  forgave  the  fate  which 
deformed  him.  A  twisted  oak,  that  is  all  —  no 
less  a  tree  and  no  less  beautiful  in  the  landscape  ! 
And  it  was  sufficient  to  live.  In  the -bosom  of  so 
much  beauty  sufficient  also  to  die.  As  he  stood, 
thinking  it  out,  feeling  the  wonder  and  the  glory, 
at  times  sorry  for  those  who  can  see  no  longer  the 
slanting  sheets  of  rain  and  the  grass  at  the  feet, 
at  times  feeling  that  -since  this'is  good,  in  some 
impalpable  way  oblivion  to  all  this  may  be 
also  good,  as  he  stood  there,  flushed  with  the 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

climbing  and  sad  with  great  joy,  the  thought 
came :  With  whom  ?  It  cannot  be  lived  alone. 
With  whom  ?  He  turned  at  the  touch  of  an 
arm  at  his  shoulder  to  meet  the  smile  and  the 
look  and  the  quick  breath  of  her  who  had  sent 
herself  his  Eve. 

In  the  dawn  stealing  over  the  world  of  Lon 
don,  Earl  told  the  story,  and  there  and  then  we 
saw  it  all  —  the  hill  in  the  heart  of  the  hills,  the 
reconciled  boy  who  had  climbed  its  brow,  the 
rain-drenched  woman  hurrying  to  overtake  him, 
with  the  gift  of  all  of  herself  in  her  eyes.  We 
looked  neither  at  Barbara  nor  at  Earl.  Pos 
sessed  of  the  secret,  we  spoke  a  few  words  and 
left.  Our  host  had  divulged  what  the  anniver 
sary  sought  to  celebrate.  We  understood  and 
were  glad. 

Good  night,  lad.  Would  you  could  have 
shared  our  heyday  at  the  dawning  ! 

DANE. 


[86] 


.. 


XIV 
FROM   HERBERT  WAGE   TO  DANE  KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE. 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 

February  31,  19 — . 

LOVE  is  a  something  that  begins  in  sen 
sation  and  ends  in  sentiment.     Thanks 
to  beautiful  and  permissible  hyperbole, 
you  have  begun  with  sensation  in  your  description 
of  love,  and  have  ended  with  sentiment.  You  have 
told  me  about  love,  in  terms  of  love,  which  is^a 
vain  performance  and  unscientific.     Now  let  me\ 
make  you  a  definition.     Love  is  a  disorder  of 
mind  and  body,  and  is  produced  by  passion  under 
the  stimulus  of  imagination. 

Love  is  a  phase  of  the  operation  of  the  func 
tion  of  reproduction,  and  it  occurs  solely  in  man. 
Love,  adhering  to  the  common  understanding  of 
the  term,  is  an  emotional  excitement  which  does 
not  obtain  among  the  lower  animals.  The 
lower  animals  lack  the  stimulus  of  imagination, 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

and  with  them  the  passion  for  perpetuation 
remains  a  mere  passion.  But  man  has  developed 
imagination.  The  pure  sexual  passion  is  glossed 
over  and  obscured  by  a  cloud  of  fancies,  mis 
taken  yearnings,  and  distorted  dreams.  And  so 
well  is  the  real  intent  of  the  function  obscured, 
that  it  is  actually  lost  to  him,  especially  during 
the  period  of  love  madness,  so  that  there  seems 
an  apparent  divorce  between  the  parts  which  go  to 
make  up  love,  between  passion  and  imagination. 
The  romantic  lover  of  to-day  (expressing 
sensation  in  terms  of  sentiment,  and  fondly 
imagining  that  he  is  reasoning)  cannot  reconcile 

1  his  soul-exaltation  with  bodily  grossness,  cannot 
conceive  that  soul  can  turn  body,  and  in  the 
embrace  of  body  tell  out  all  the  wonder  of  soul. 
To  all  sensitive  and  spiritual  men  and  women 
come  times  of  anguish  and  tears  and  self-revolt, 

I  when  they  are  confounded  and  heart-broken  by 
the  physical  aspect  of  love.  Poor  men  and 
women  !  they  suffer  keenly  and  sincerely  through 
lack  of  something  more  than  a  sentimental  con 
cept  of  love.  To  them,  body  and  soul  appear 
things  apart,  to  be  kept  apart,  lest  the  one  con 
taminate  the  other.  And  in  the  end,  loving 
[88] 


FROM   WAGE   TO    KEMPTON 

well  and  truly,  they  prove  their  love  by  enduring, 
though  unable  ever  quite  to  shake  off  the  sense 
of  sin  and  shame  and  personal  degradation. 
They  do  not  understand  life,  that  is  the  trouble. 
The  beast,  lacking  imagination,  needs  no  rational 
Tightness  for  the  various  acts  of  living,  such  as 
they  need,  and  which  they  do  not  possess. 
Because  of  their  unchecked  and  unbalanced 
imagination  they  mistake  the  half  of  life  for  the 
whole,  and  when  forced  to  face  the  whole  are 
affrighted  and  shocked.  They  do  not  reason 
that  the  need  for  perpetuation  is  the  cause  of 
passion ;  and  that  human  passion,  working 
through  imagination  and  worked  upon  by  imagi 
nation,  becomes  love. 

And  while  I  am  in  this  vein,  I  may  as  well 
deny  that  a  greater  spiritual  dowry  than  affection 
is  required  for  marriage.  (For  that  matter,  I  fail 
to  see  anything  so  spiritual  in  erotic  phenomena.) 
If  a  man  may  achieve  affection  for  a  woman, 
without  undergoing  pre-nuptial  madness,  —  if  a 
man  may  take  the  short  cut,  as  it  were,  —  then 
I  see  no  reason  why  he  should  not  marry  that 
woman.  He  is  certainly  justified,  since  affection 
is  what  romantic  love  must  evolve  into  after  mar- 

[89] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

riage.  But  do  not  mistake  me,  Dane.  I  do  not 
intend  this  sweepingly.  It  will  not  do  for  the 
whole  human  herd ;  for  at  once  enters  that  ab 
horrent  thing  you  rightly  fear,  the  marriage  for 
convenience.  Alas,  it  too  often  masquerades 
under  the  guise  of  romantic  love.  Certainly, 
every  man  is  not  capable  of  taking  this  short  cut 
and  at  the  same  time  of  avoiding  a  violation  of 
true  sexual  selection.  Having  little  brain,  the 
average  man  can  only  act  in  line  with  sexual 
selection  by  undergoing  the  romantic  love 
malady.  But  for  some  few  of  us,  and  I  dare  to 
include  myself,  the  short  cut  is  permissible. 
This  short  cut  I  shall  take,  and  far  be  it  from 
any  worldly  sense  of  stocks  and  bonds  and  com 
fortable  housekeeping. 

Marriage  means  less  to  man  than  to  woman  ? 
Yes,  by  all  means,  at  least  to  the  normal  man  or 
woman.  As  surely  as  reproduction  is  woman's 
peculiar  function,  and  nutrition  man's,  just  so 
surely  does  marriage  sum  up  more  to  woman 
than  to  man.  It  becomes  the  whole  life  of 
the  woman,  while  to  the  man  it  is  rather  an  epi 
sode,  rather  a  mere  side  to  his  many-sided  life. 
Natural  selection  has  made  it  so.  The  count- 

[90] 


FROM   WAGE   TO    KEMPTON 

less  men  of  the  past,  even  from  before  the  time 
they  swung  down  out  of  the  trees,  who  devoted 
more  time  and  energy  to  their  love-affairs  than 
to  the  winning  of  food  and  shelter,  died  from 
innutrition  in  various  ways.  Only  the  men, 
normal  men,  with  a  proper  respect  for  the 
mechanism  of  life,  survived  and  perpetuated  their  jj^  & 
kind.  The  chance  was  large  that  the  abnormal 
lover  did  not  win  a  wife  at  all.  At  least  it  is 
so  to-day.  The  abnormal  lover  is  not  a  success 
ful  bidder  for  women,  and  is  usually  passed  by. 

But  while  we  are  on  this  topic,  do  not  let  us  for 
get  Dante  Alighieri,  your  prince  of  lovers.  Has 
a  suitable  explanation  ever  occurred  to  you  con 
cerning  how  he  came  to  marry  Gemma,  daughter 
of  Manetto  Donati,  who  bore  him  seven  children, 
and  was  never  once  mentioned  in  the  "  Divina 
Commedia  "  ?  You  remember  what  he  said  of  his 
first  meeting  with  Beatrice,  "  At  that  moment 
I  saw  most  truly  that  the  spirit  of  life  which 
hath  its  dwelling  in  the  secretest  chambers  of 
the  heart  began  to  tremble  so  violently  that  the 
least  pulses  of  my  body  shook  therewith."  And 
he  later  had  seven  children  by  Gemma,  daughter 
of  Manetto  Donati,  and  whom,  as  the  historian 

[91] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

has  recorded,  "there  was  no  reason  to  suppose 
other  than  a  good  wife." 

As  for  the  primitive,  I  hark  back  to  it  because 
we  are  still  very  primitive.  How  many  thou 
sands  of  years  of  culture,  think  you,  have  rubbed 
and  polished  at  our  raw  edges  ?  One,  probably ; 
at  the  best,  not  more  than  two.  And  that  takes 
us  back  to  screaming  savagery,  when,  gross  of 
body  and  deed,  we  drank  blood  from  the  skulls 
of  our  enemies,  and  hailed  as  highest  paradise 
the  orgies  and  carnage  of  Valhalla.  And  before 
that  time,  think  you,  how  many  thousands  of 
years  of  savagery  did  we  endure  ?  and  how  many 
myriads  of  thousands  in  the  long  procession  of 
life  up  from  the  first  vitalized  inorganic  ?  Two 
thousand  years  are  an  extremely  thin  veneer 
with  which  to  cover  the  many  millions. 

And  further,  our  much-vaunted  two  thousand 
years  of  culture  is  a  thing  of  the  mind,  an  ac 
quired  character.  We  are  not  born  with  it. 
Each  must  gather  it  for  himself  after  he  is  born, 
from  the  spoken  and  written  words  of  his  fellows 
and  forerunners.  Isolate  a  babe  from  all  of  its 
kind  and  it  will  never  learn  to  speak,  and  with 
out  speech  words,  it  can  never  think  save  in  the 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

concretest  possible  way.  Yet  will  it  possess  all 
the  brute  instincts  and  passions  —  the  raw  edges 
which  do  constantly  shove  through  the  culture 
varnish  of  the  civilized  man. 

Our  culture  is  the  last  to  come,  the  first  to  go. 
I  have  seen  it  go  from  a  man  in  an  hour,  nay, 
on  the  instant.  Our  culture  is  nothing  more 
than  the  accumulated  wisdom  of  the  race.  It 
is  not  part  of  us,  not  a  thing  or  attribute  handed 
down  from  father  to  son.  It  is  a  something  ac 
quired  in  varying  degree  by  each  individual  for 
himself.  Yes,  I  do  well  to  hark  back  to  the 
primitive.  It  tells  me  where  I  am  to-day  and 
describes  to  me  the  world  I  am  living  in.  You, 
Dane,  are  hyper-refined,  or  refined  beyond  the 
times.  You  are  like  the  idealistic  and  advanced 
zealots,  who,  when  such  action  would  mean  de 
struction,  advise  these  United  States  to  disarm 
in  the  face  of  the  war-harnessed  world. 

But  no  more  of  this  jerky  letter.  Soon  I  shall 
proceed  to  make  my  contention  good.  I  shall 
show  the  higher  part  intellect  plays  in  conjugal 
love,  the  control,  restraint,  forbearance,  sacrifice. 
And  I  shall  show  that  conjugal  love  is  higher 
and  finer  than  romantic  love.  HERBERT. 

[93] 


XV 
FROM  DANE  KEMPTON  TO  HERBERT  WAGE 

LONDON, 

3  A  QUEEN'S  ROAD,  CHELSEA,  S.W., 
March  15,  19 — . 

CLYDE  STEBBINS  was  here  an  hour 
after    your    theories    and    definitions 
reached   me.      The   fact    that    I    had 
been  reading  treason  against  his  sister   made 
me  pick  my  subjects  a  little  too  carefully  for 
smooth  conversation.     Your  letter,  partly  open, 
was  on  the  table  before  us,  and  my  eyes  fell 
upon  it   often   as   I  wondered   what   it   would 
mean  to  Hester's  brother  if  he  could  read  it.     I 
no  longer  think  only  of  you. 

I  reject  your  definition  of  love.  It  is  not  a 
disorder  of  the  mind  and  body,  nor  is  it  solely 
the  instrument  of  reproduction.  I  reject  and 
resent  your  distinction  between  the  pre-nuptial 
and  post-nuptial  states  of  feeling.  Further,  I 
hold  that  marriage  may  not  be  based  on  affec- 

[94] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

tion  alone,  and  I  disagree  with  you  that  popu 
lation  is  better  than  principle.  Children  need 
not  be  brought  into  the  world  at  any  cost. 

Love  is  not  a  disorder,  but  a  growth.  There 
is  spiritual  as  well  as  physical  growth.  Some 
men  and  women  never  grow  up  strong  enough 
to  love.  Their  development  is  arrested,  or  they 
are,  from  the  beginning,  poor  creatures  born  of 
starvelings,  and  perhaps  fated  to  give  birth  to 
pale,  sapless  beings  like  themselves.  Others 
there  are  who  love,  and  this  is  no  ill  chance, 
no  disease  of  the  mind  and  body  calling  for 
psychiater  and  physician.  It  is  a  strength,  a 
becoming,  a  fulfilment.  Let  us  reason  from 
the  effect  to  the  cause.  How  does  this  mad 
ness  manifest  itself  ?  Not  in  weakness.  You 
never  saw  a  man  or  woman  in  love  who  was  the 
worse  for  it.  The  lover  carries  all  things  before 
him,  and  not  for  himself  alone,  but  for  a  larger 
world  than  ever  had  been  his.  He  who  loves 
one  must  perforce  love  all  the  world  and  all  the 
unborn  worlds.  This  is  the  way  life  goes,  which 
is  another  way  of  saying  it  is  a  scientific  fact. 
That  which  makes  men  capable  of  consecration 
is  not  a  disorder  of  the  mind  and  body.  It  is 

[95] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

the  greatest  of  all  forces,  and  it  turns  the  wran 
gling  and  grabbing  human  creature  into  an 
inspired  poet. 

And  the  cause  ?  The  passion  for  perpetuation 
and  the  imagination.  We  agree.  But  there  are 
other  and  more  immediate  needs  than  the  need 
of  perpetuation  that  call  out  love,  needs  that  are 
peculiarly  of  the  present,  being  bound  up  with 
the  steady  outreaching  for  help,  for  fellowship 
in  the  jerky  journey  through  the  universe.  If 
love  were  no  more  than  an  instrument  of  repro 
duction,  you  would  be  right  in  maintaining  that 
the  fastidiousness  I  insist  on  is  unnecessary  and 
unnatural.  If  love  were  that  and  that  alone, 
there  would  be  no  love,  which  is  a  paradox  indeed. 

"  Because  of  our  souls'  yearning  that  we  meet 
And  mix  in  soul  through  flesh,  which  yours  and  mine 
Wear  and  impress,  and  make  their  visible  selves,  — 
All  which  means,  for  the  love  of  you  and  me, 
Let  us  become  one  flesh,  being  one  soul." 

I  dare  a  formula :  In  the  beginning  love  arose 
in  the  passion  for  perpetuation ;  to-day,  the 
passion  for  perpetuation  arises  in  love.  Just  as 
we  put  ourselves  in  the  way  of  natural  selection, 
pitting  the  microcosm  against  the  macrocosm  in 

[96] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO  WAGE 

a  passion  of  ethical  feeling,  just  so  do  we  reverse 
for  ourselves  processes  that  seem  indeed  to  have 
all  the  force  of  law.  This  reversal  is  civilization. 

The  lover  is  impelled  to  perpetuate  himself  in 
the  Here  and  the  Now.  The  law  of  life  exacts 
from  him  the  tribute  of  love.  Imagination  gives 
the  lover  the  key  to  the  object  of  his  love.  He 
enters  and  he  beholds  only  the  ideal  which  is 
hers ;  for  him  her  clay  self  and  the  mere  facts 
of  her  do  not  exist.  The  conditions  of  love  are 
inherent  in  civilization.  When  purpose  is  high 
and  feeling  rich,  when  "  the  everlasting  posses 
sion  of  the  good  "  is  desired,  then  is  heard  the 
I  Am  of  love. 

Now  to  my  definition.  Negatively,  love  is 
not  a  disorder  of  the  mind  and  body,  not  a 
madness,  since  it  arises  in  the  eternally  most 
valuable,  since  it  is  the  culmination  of  high  pro 
cesses,  and  since  it  makes  for  sanity  of  vision 
and  strength  and  happiness.  Positively,  love  is 
the  awakening  of  the  personality  to  the  beauty 
and  worth  of  some  one  being,  caused  by  the 
passion  for  perpetuation  and  by  imagination. 
It  is  a  desire  to  hold  to  the  good  everlastingly, 
and  to  merge  with  it. 

H  [97] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

Aristotle  proved  to  the  satisfaction  of  his 
time  that  women  have  fewer  teeth  than  men. 
Aristotle  was  a  great  man,  and  besides  being 
a  philosopher  was  the  foremost  scientist  of  his 
day.  I  cannot  help  thinking  of  this  prodigious 
blunder.  Perhaps  (who  knows  ?)  the  same 
famous  fate  which  a  sexual  classification  of 
teeth  enjoys  awaits  a  definition  calling  love  a 
disorder. 

I  will  continue  to-morrow.  A  note  has  just 
been  given  me  calling  me  to  Earl,  who  is  ill, 
but  not  seriously.  Barbara  has  prescribed  for 
him  a  game  of  chess.  The  desire  to  see  you 
again  has  got  into  my  blood.  I  think  I  shall  be 
in  the  new  West  and  with  you  before  long. 
Your  friend  always, 

DANE  KEMPTON. 


[98] 


XVI 

FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

LONDON, 
Sunday  Morning. 

I  MUST  proceed  with  the  three  other 
points  of  my  letter,  so  I  shall  stay  here 
and  write,  though  there  is  a  sharp  breeze 
this  morning  and  a  coquettishly  escaping  sun 
light,  and  something  tugs  at  me  to  go  out  upon 
the  city  streets.  It  is  not  restlessness,  but  the 
love  of  the  open.  I  am  fain  to  leave  a  walled 
house,  and,  better  still,  to  get  outside  of  the 
walls  within  and  join  the  city  in  friendship 
and  let  the  city  join  me.  I  never  feel  greater 
fellowship  than  when  I  walk  — 

Except  when  I  write  to  you.  Then  do  I 
greaten  with  the  pride  of  life.  My  sympathies 
quicken  and  I  grow  young  again.  I  constitute 
myself  advocate  of  the  world,  and  enthusiasm 
does  not  fail  me  in  this  high  calling.  It  is 

[99] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

but  natural  that  in  the  face  of  scepticism 
which  I  cannot  share  I  should  feel  greater 
faith,  that  in  the  face  of  revilement  a  sense 
of  the  glory  of  the  thing  belittled  should  settle 
upon  me.  I  turn  zealot  and  spend  myself  in 
long-drawn  praising.  I  lay  myself  under  a  spell 
of  harmony  because  I  am  serving  and  defending 
and  approving  what  I  hold  to  be  good. 

So  when  you  insist  that  romantic  love  is 
pre-nuptial  and  that  it  dies  at  marriage  as 
others  suppose  it  to  die  at  the  approach  of 
poverty,  I  grow  glad  with  the  knowledge  that 
this  is  not  true.  I  scrutinize  facts  which  I 
hitherto  took  for  granted,  and  become  doubly 
sure.  You  dogmatize  when  you  say  that  the 
lover  and  the  husband  are  mutually  exclusive. 
Jf  there  was  love  in  the  beginning,  it  will  be 
at  the  end.  Love  doubles  upon  itself.  Pro 
pinquity  tightens  bonds  and  there  is  a  steady 
blossoming  of  the  character  in  a  radiant  atmos 
phere.  The  marriages  that  fail  are  the  unions 
which  are  based  on  liking.  In  these,  weariness 
must  set  in,  for  marriage  demands  that  men 
and  women  be  all  in  all  to  each  other,  and 
unless  it  be  so  with  them,  the  lives  of  the 
[100] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

"  contracting  parties  "  are,  by  the  laws  of  logic, 
and  by  the  force  of  the  laws  of  delicacy  in  the 
art  of  living,  forever  spoilt. 

Yes,  and  people  who  truly  love  come  to 
regret  their  married  love,  these  too.  But  these 
have  at  least  begun  well.  Their  lives  are  infi 
nitely  richer  for  this  fact.  Their  failure  itself 
is  made  by  it  more  bearable  than  the  failure 
of  those  others  who  act  the  vulgarian  and 
demand  so  little  of  life  that  even  that  little  es 
capes  them.  No  world-stains  on  these  who  are, 
at  least,  would-be  lovers.  They  stand  mistaken 
but  irreproachable.  It  was  neither  their  fault 
nor  love's,  and  "life  more  abundant"  comes  to 
them  even  with  the  mistake. 

You  are  consistent.  Just  as  you  maintain 
that  love  is  passion,  so  do  you  think  that  it 
is  no  more  than  a  preliminary  thrill.  You 
note  a  change ;  the  flutter  and  the  excitement 
felt  in  the  presence  of  the  unknown  go,  and  you 
do  not  know  that  they  give  place  to  the  steadier 
joys  of  the  known,  that  after  the  promise  comes 
the  fulfilment,  that  the  hope  is  not  more  beauti 
ful  than  the  realization,  that  there  is  divinity  in 
both,  and  that  love  does  not  disappoint. 

[10!] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

Tell  me,  are  the  placid  marriages  of  affection 
you  are  preparing  to  describe  so  very  placid  ? 
Do  these  jog  along  so  well  ?  Is  the  control, 
restraint,  forbearance,  sacrifice,  of  which  you 
speak,  as  readily  practised  for  the  person 
who  is  that  to  you  which  twenty  others  may 
quite  as  easily  be,  as  it  is  for  the  one  beyond  all 
whom  you  love  and  deify,  whom  the  laws  of 
your  being  command  that  you  serve,  living  and 
dying  ?  God  knows,  the  average  marriage  does 
not  exhibit  a  striking  picture  of  the  practice  of 
these  virtues !  Rather  are  such  phrases  ideals 
on  stilts  on  which  suffering  marital  partners 
attempt  to  hobble  across  their  extremity.  On 
the  other  hand,  to  some  extent  everybody  prac 
tises  restraint  and  sacrifice  since  everybody  is 
to  some  extent  moral.  But  it  goes  very  hard 
with  your  average  man  and  woman  in  your  aver 
age  marriage,  and  there  is  a  decided  setting  of 
the  mouth  and  narrowing  of  the  eyes  with  the 
effort. 

Whatever  placidity  there  is  is  attained  by 
means  of  vampirism.  Diderot,  the  husband  of  a 
stupid  seamstress,  had  no  right  to  the  love  of  a 
Mile.  Voland.  It  was  vampirism  and  sin  to  take 

[102] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO   THE   SAME 

all  from  this  woman,  and  to  return  her  favour 
with  so  much  less  than  all,  as  surely  as  cowardice 
and  selfishness  are  sin.  But  the  illicit  relation 
will  exist  because  custom  cannot  rid  men  and 
women  of  subtle  sympathies  and  dear  yearnings, 
because  men  and  women  will  love  though  the 
world  consider  it  cheap  and  mad.  Individually, 
we  have  no  difficulty  in  finding  our  happiness, 
but  we  are  made  advance  toward  it  through  the 
twisted  byways  of  an  unfrank  world.  "  No 
straight  road  !  Keep  turning  ! "  has  been  the 
scream  of  convention  since  convention  began. 

So  for  every  commonplace  marriage  there  is 
a  canonized  love,  and  the  story  is  told  in  the 
old  Greek  civilization  by  the  Hetairae.  You 
remember  how  it  reads  in  the  history :  "  The 
low  position  generally  assigned  the  wife  in  the 
home  had  a  most  disastrous  effect  upon  Greek 
morals.  She  could  exert  no  such  elevating  or 
refining  influence  as  she  casts  over  the  modern 
home.  The  men  were  led  to  seek  social  and 
intellectual  sympathy  and  companionship  out 
side  the  family  circle,  among  a  class  of  women 
known  as  Hetairae,  who  were  esteemed  chiefly 
for  their  brilliancy  of  intellect.  As  the  most 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

noted  representative  of  this  class  stands  Aspasia, 
the  friend  of  Pericles.  The  influence  of  the 
Hetairae  was  most  harmful  to  social  morality.'* 
And  the  practice  persisted  through  many  a 
renaissance  where  Lauras  and  Beatrices  were 
besung,  down  to  the  brilliant  encyclopaedists  of 
the  eighteenth  century  with  their  avowed  loves, 
down  to  our  Goethe  and  John  Stuart  Mill. 
All  of  these  loves  rose  in  very  different  motives 
and  environments,  yet  were  they  the  same  fun 
damentally,  —  strong,  sweet  love  between  man 
and  woman,  very  much  spoiled  by  the  fact  that 
custom  permitted  the  loveless  marriage  at  the 
same  time,  but  yet  love  which  was  good  since  it 
was  the  best  that  could  be  had.  And  when  the 
historian  permits  himself  to  say,  "The  influence 
of  the  Hetairse  was  most  harmful  to  social 
morality,"  it  is  evident  that  he  also  thinks  that 
a  marriage  which  compels  husband  or  wife  to 
seek  soul's  help  elsewhere  than  in  their  union 
is  bad  and  wrong. 

To-day  there  is  a  change  in  attitude.    Woman 

is  new-born  in  strength  and  dignity,  and  the 

highest  chivalry  the  world  has  ever  known  is  in 

blossom.     She  is  an  equal,  a  comrade,  a  right 

[104] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

regal  person.  She  is  no  longer  a  means  but 
an  end  in  herself,  not  alone  fit  to  mother 
men  but  fit  to  live  in  equality  with  men. 
I  repeat,  she  is  not  a  means  but  an  individual, 
with  a  soul  of  her  own  to  rear.  Because  of 
the  greater  and  more  general  emancipation  of 
woman  the  subtlety  of  modern  love  has  become 
possible. 

Now  for  the  last  point,  the  question  of  per 
petuation.  Just  as  function  precedes  organ,  so- 
the  love  of  life  is  inherent  in  the  living  for  the 
maintenance  of  life.  But  even  the  primitive 
man,  in  whom  instinct  is  strongest,  proves  him 
self  capable  of  death.  Some  men  have  always 
been  able  to  give  up  their  lives  for  some  cause. 
(Indeed  there  is  thought  to  be  suicide  amongst 
animals.)  And  to-day  we  certainly  no  longer 
say  a  man  must  live.  Quite  as  often  must  he 
die.  Men  have  found  it  wise  to  die  at  the  stake 
or  on  the  gallows.  If  this  be  true  of  our  rela 
tion  to  the  life  which  courses  through  us,  how 
much  more  true  is  it  of  our  instinct  to  per 
petuate  ourselves,  which  pertains  to  the  love 
of  life  biologically  only,  which  is  often,  in  the 
social  manifestation  of  that  instinct,  a  cold 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

intellectual  concept  and  never  a  dominating 
thought !  We  are  not  driven  to  procreate.  In 
fact,  every  child  born  into  the  world  competes 
hard  for  its  morsel.  Under  our  unimaginable 
economic  regime  all  increase  in  population  is  a 
menace. 

I  call  bringing  children  into  the  world  a  cod 
fish  act  which  causes  an  overflux  of  vulgar  little 
earthlings,  if  the  process  be  not  humanized  and 
spiritualized.  If  the  child  is  conceived  not  in 
lust  but  in  love,  it  is  rightly  born.  If  it  is  the 
child  of  your  ideal,  the  offspring  of  that  which 
is  your  truest  life,  then  is  your  progeny  your 
immortality,  and  then,  and  then  only,  have  you 
reason  for  pride  and  joy  in  that  which  you  have 
caused  to  be. 

My  dear,  dear  Herbert,  my  love  has  not 
failed.  This  you  must  come  to  understand. 
Love  never  fails.  The  children  that  might  have 
been  mine  are  better  unborn,  since  I  could  not 
give  them  a  mother  whom  I  loved.  You  remind 
me  that  Dante  married  Gemma,  daughter  of 
Manetto  Donati,  and  she  bore  him  seven  chil 
dren.  Yet,  Herbert,  was  this  wife  not  men 
tioned  in  the  "Commedia,"  nor  in  "La  Vita 
[106] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO   THE   SAME 

Nuova,"  nor  anywhere  else  in  his  writings. 
Dante  was  a  conformist.  He  was  not  in  all 
respects  above  his  time;  witness  his  theology. 
Convention  permitted  the  dispassionate  marriage 
side  by  side  with  love.  He  was  conventional, 
and  the  infinite  moment  of  meeting  in  paradise 
with  his  Lady  was  embittered  by  her  "cold, 
lessoned  smiles." 

"  Ah,  from  what  agonies  of  heart  and  brain, 
What  exultations  trampling  on  despair, 
What  tenderness,  what  tears,  what  hate  of  wrong, 
What  passionate  outcry  of  a  soul  in  pain, 
Uprose  this  poem  of  the  earth  and  air, 
This  mediaeval  miracle  of  song  ! " 

It  was  for  Beatrice  that  this  man  vexed  his 
spirit  with  immortal  effort  and  raised  a  Titan 
voice  which  yet  is  heard  in  charmed  echoes. 
It  was  for  Beatrice  that  he  descended  into  the 
dread  regions  and  climbed  the  hills  of  purga 
tory  and  soared  toward  the  Rose  of  Paradise,  — 
"And  'She,  where  is  She?'  instantly  I  cried." 

Dante,  our  prince  of  lovers,  might  have  lived 
better,  but  he  loved  well. 

This  in  answer  to  your  letter.     To  meet  your 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

argument  I  have  found  it  best  to  employ  some 
thing  of  your  own  method,  but  I  cannot  rid  my 
self  of  the  feeling  that  I  have  vulgarized  the 
subject  by  saying  so  much  about  it.  I  fear  my 
letter  would  provoke  a  smile  from  those  who 
know  love  and  the  wonder  of  its  simplicity 
through  all  the  subtlety.  "We,  in  loving,  have 
no  cause  to  speak  so  much  !  "  would  be  their 
unanswerable  criticism.  It  is  easier  to  live  than 
to  argue  about  life. 

The  thought  has  suddenly  assailed  me  that 
what  I  have  said  may  sound  derogatory  to 
Hester.  Know,  then,  that  I  do  not  think  there 
is  a  woman  in  the  world  who  is  not  capable  of 
inspiring  true  and  abiding  love  in  the  heart  of 
some  man.  Besides,  Hester  to  me  looms  up  as 
a  heroine.  Not  a  hair's  breadth  of  what  I  know 
of  her  that  is  not  beautiful.  My  regret  is  that 
she,  who  could  be  "  a  vision  eterne,"  should  be 
doomed  to  receive  episodically  your  considerate 
affection.  She  does  not  know  your  programme. 
She  is  a  girl  who  takes  your  love  for  granted  in 
the  same  way  as  she  gives  hers,  without  nig 
gardliness.  It  is  the  woman  who  cannot  be 
content  with  less  than  all  that  is  slowly  starved 
[108] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

to  death   on  a  bread-and-water    diet    and   who 
does  not  find  it  out  until  the  end. 

Until  the  carnival  time  when  you  and  Hester 
come  to  love  each  other,  if  that  time  is  to  be, 
you  two  must  be  as  separate  in  deed  as  you  are 
in  fact.  Forgive  me  and  write  soon. 

Yours  ever, 

DANE. 


[109] 


XVII 
FROM   HERBERT  WAGE   TO   DANE   KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 

April  2,  19 — . 

SO  you  have  met  Hester's  brother  ?  Well, 
I  have  had  an  outing  with  Hester.  She 
loves  me  well,  I  know,  and  I  cannot  but 
confess  a  thrill  at  the  thought.  On  the  other 
hand,  well  do  I  know  the  significance  of  that 
love,  the  significance  and  the  cause.  Notwith 
standing  that  wonderful  soul  of  hers,  she  is  in 
no  wise  constituted  differently  from  her  millions 
of  sisters  on  the  planet  to-day.  She  loves  — 
she  knows  not  why;  she  knows  —  only  that 
she  loves.  In  other  words,  she  does  not  reason 
her  emotions. 

But  let  us  reason,  we  men,  after  the  manner 

of  men.     And  be  thou  patient,  Dane,  and  follow 

me  down  and  under  the  phenomena  of  love  to 

things  sexless  and  loveless.     And  from  there,  as 

[no] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

the  proper  point  of  departure, -let  us  return  and 
chart  love,  its  phases  and  occurrences,  from  its 
first  beginnings  to  its  last  manifestations. 

Things  sexless  and  loveless !  Yes,  and  as 
such  may  be  classed  the  drops  of  life  known  as 
unicellular  organisms.  Such  a  creature  is  a  tiny 
cell,  capable  of  performing  in  itself  all  the  func 
tions  of  life.  That  one  pulsating  morsel  of 
matter  is  invested  with  an  irritability  which,  as 
Herbert  Spencer  says,  enables  it  "to  adjust  the 
inner  relations  with  outer  relations,"  to  corre 
spond  to  its  environment  —  in  short,  to  live. 
That  single  cell  contracts  and  recoils  from  the 
things  in  its  environment  uncongenial  to  its 
constitution,  and  the  things  congenial  it  draws 
to  itself  and  absorbs.  It  has  no  mouth,  no 
stomach,  no  alimentary  canal.  It  is  all  mouth, 
all  stomach,  all  alimentary  canal. 

But  at  that  low  plane  the  functions  of  life  are 
few  and  simple.  This  bit  of  vitalized  inorganic 
has  no  sex,  and  because  of  that  it  cannot  love. 
Reproduction  is  growth.  When  it  grows  over- 
large  it  splits  in  half,  and  where  was  one  cell 
there  are  two.  Nor  can  the  parent  cell  be  called 
mother or  father ;  and  for  that  matter,  the  parent 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

cell  cannot  be  determined.  The  original  cell 
split  into  two  cells ;  one  has  as  much  claim  to 
parenthood  as  the  other. 

It  lives  dimly,  to  be  sure,  this  mote  of  life  and 
light  ;  but  before  it  is  a  vast  evolution,  Dane,  on 
the  pinnacle  of  which  are  to  be  found  men  and 
women,  Hester  Stebbins,  my  mother,  you  ! 

A  step  higher  we  find  the  cell  cluster,  and 
with  it  begins  that  differentiation  which  has  con 
tinued  to  this  day  and  which  still  continues. 
Simplicity  has  yielded  to  complexity  and  a  new 
epoch  of  life  been  inaugurated.  The  outer  cells 
of  the  cluster  are  more  exposed  to  environmen 
tal  forces  than  are  the  inner  cells  ;  they  cohere 
more  tenaciously  and  a  rudimentary  skin  is 
formed.  Through  the  pores  of  this  skin  food 
is  absorbed,  and  in  these  food-absorbing  pores 
is  foreshadowed  the  mouth.  Division  of  labour 
has  set  in,  and  groups  of  cells  specialize  in  the 
performance  of  functions.  Thus,  a  cell  group 
forms  the  skinny  covering  of  the  cluster,  another 
cell  group  the  mouth.  And  likewise,  internally, 
the  stomach,  a  sac  for  the  reception  and  diges 
tion  of  food,  takes  shape ;  and  the  juices  of  the 
body  begin  to  circulate  with  greater  definite- 

[112] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

ness,  breaking  channels  in  their  passage  and 
keeping  those  channels  open.  And,  as  the  gen 
erations  pass,  still  more  groups  of  cells  segre 
gate  themselves  from  the  mass,  and  the  heart, 
the  lungs,  the  liver,  and  other  internal  organs 
are  formed.  The  jelly-like  organism  develops  a 
bony  structure,  muscles  by  which  to  move  itself, 
and  a  nervous  system  — 

Be  not  bored,  Dane,  and  be  not  offended. 
These  are  our  ancestors,  and  their  history  is  our 
history.  Remember  that  as  surely  as  we  one 
day  swung  down  out  of  the  trees  and  walked 
upright,  just  so  surely,  on  a  far  earlier  day,  did 
we  crawl  up  out  of  the  sea  and  achieve  our  first 
adventure  on  land. 

But  to  be  brief.  In  the  course  of  specializa 
tion  of  function,  as  I  have  outlined,  just  as  other 
organs  arose,  so  arose  sex-differentiation.  Pre 
vious  to  that  time  there  was  no  sex.  A  single 
organism  realized  all  potentialities,  fulfilled  all 
functions.  Male  and  female,  the  creative  fac 
tors,  were  incoherently  commingled.  Such  an 
individual  was  both  male  and  female.  It  was 
complete  in  itself,  —  mark  this,  Dane,  for  here 
individual  completeness  ends. 

I  ["3] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

The  labour  of  reproduction  was  divided,  and 
male  and  female,  as  separate  entities,  came  into 
the  world.  They  shared  the  work  of  reproduc 
tion  between  them.  Neither  was  complete 
alone.  Each  was  the  complement  of  the  other. 
In  times  and  seasons  each  felt  a  vital  need  for  the 
other.  And  in  the  satisfying  of  this  vital  need, 
of  this  yearning  for  completeness,  we  have  the 
first  manifestation  of  love.  Male  and  female 
loved  they  one  another  —  but  dimly,  Dane. 
We  would  not  to-day  call  it  love,  yet  it  fore 
shadowed  love  as  the  food-absorbing  pore 
foreshadowed  the  mouth. 

As  long  and  tedious  as  has  been  the  devel 
opment  of  this  rudimentary  love  to  the  highly 
evolved  love  of  to-day,  just  so  long  and  tedious 
would  be  my  sketch  of  that  development.  How 
ever,  the  factors  may  be  hinted.  The  increasing 
correspondence  of  life  with  its  environment 
brought  -about  wider  and  wider  generalizations 
upon  that  environment  and  the  relations  of  the 
individual  to  it.  There  is  no  missing  link  to  the 
chain  that  connects  the  first  and  lowest  life  to 
the  last  and  highest.  There  is  no  gap  between 
the  physical  and  psychical.  From  simple  reflex 

["4] 


FROM   WAGE  TO   KEMPTON 

action,  on  and  up  through  compound  reflex  action, 
instinct,  and  memory,  the  passage  is  made,  with 
out  break,  to  reason.  And  hand  in  hand  with 
these,  all  acting  and  reacting  upon  one  another, 
comes  the  development  of  the  imagination  and 
of  the  higher  passions,  feelings,  and  emotions. 
But  all  of  this  is  in  the  books,  and  there  is  no 
need  for  me  to  go  over  the  ground. 

So  let  me  sum  up  with  an  analysis  of  that 
most  exquisite  of  poets'  themes,  a  maiden  in 
love.  In  the  first  place,  this  maiden  must  come 
of  an  ancestry  mastered  by  the  passion  for  per 
petuation.  It  is  only  through  those  so  mastered 
that  the  line  comes  down.  The  individual  per 
ishes,  you  know;  for  it  is  the  race  that  lives. 
In  this  maiden  is  incorporated  all  the  experi 
ence  of  the  race.  This  race  experience  is  her 
heritage.  Her  function  is  to  pass  it  on  to  pos 
terity.  If  she  be  disobedient,  she  is  unfruitful ; 
her  line  ceases  with  her ;  and  she  is  without 
avail  among  the  generations  to  come.  And,  be 
it  not  forgotten,  there  are  many  obedient  whose 
lines  will  pass  down. 

But  this  maiden  is  obedient.  By  her  acts  she 
will  link  the  past  to  the  future,  bind  together 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

the  two  eternities.  But  she  is  incomplete,  this 
maiden,  and  being  immature  she  is  unaware  of 
her  incompleteness.  Nevertheless  she  is  the 
creature  of  the  law  of  the  race,  and  from  her 
infancy  she  prepares  herself  for  the  task  she  is 
to  perform.  Hers  is  a  certain  definite  organism, 
somewhat  different  from  all  other  female  or 
ganisms.  Consequently  there  is  one  male  in 
all  the  world  whose  organism  is  most  nearly  the 
complement  of  hers ;  one  male  for  whom  she 
will  feel  the  greatest,  intensest,  and  most  vital 
need  ;  one  male  who  of  all  males  is  the  fittest, 
organically,  to  be  the  father  of  her  children. 
And  so,  in  pinafores  and  pigtails,  she  plays  with 
little  boys  and  likes  and  dislikes  according  to 
her  organic  need.  She  comes  in  contact  with 
all  manner  of  boys,  from  the  butcher  boy  to  the 
son  of  her  father's  friend  ;  and  likewise  with 
men,  from  the  gardener  to  her  father's  associates. 
And  she  is  more  or  less  attracted  by  those  who, 
in  greater  or  less  degree,  answer  to  her  organic 
demand,  or,  as  it  were,  organic  ideal. 

And  upon  creatures  male  she  early  proceeds 
to  generalize.     This  kind  of  man  she  likes,  that 
she  does  not  like ;  and  this  kind  she  likes  more 
[116] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

than  that  kind.  She  does  not  know  why  she 
does  this ;  nor,  with  the  highest  probability, 
does  she  know  she  is  doing  it.  She  simply  has 
her  likes  and  dislikes,  that  is  all.  She  is  the 
slave  of  the  law,  unwittingly  generalizing  upon 
sex-impressions  against  the  day  when  she  must 
identify  the  male  who  most  nearly  completes  her. 

She  drifts  across  the  magic  borderland  to 
womanhood,  where  dreams  and  fancies  rise  and 
intermingle  and  the  realities  of  life  are  lost.  A 
dissatisfaction  and  a  restlessness  come  upon  her. 
There  seems  no  sanity  in  things,  and  life  is  topsy 
turvy.  She  is  filled  with  vague,  troubled  yearn 
ings,  and  the  woman  in  her  quickens  and  cries 
out  for  unity.  It  is  an  organic  cry,  old  as  the 
race,  and  she  cannot  shut  out  the  sound  of  it  or 
still  the  clamour  in  her  blood. 

But  there  is  one  male  in  all  the  world  who  is 
most  nearly  her  complement,  and  he  may  be 
over  on  the  other  side  of  the  world  where  she 
may  not  find  him.  So  propinquity  determines 
her  fate.  Of  the  males  she  is  in  contact  with, 
the  one  who  can  more  nearly  give  her  the 
completeness  she  craves  will  be  the  one  she 
loves. 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

All  of  which  is  well  and  good  in  its  way,  but 
let  us  analyze  further.  What  is  all  this  but  the 
symptoms  of  an  extreme  over-excitation  and 
nervous  disorder  ?  The  equilibrium  of  the  or 
ganism  has  been  overthrown  and  there  is  a  wild 
scrambling  for  the  restoration  of  that  equilib 
rium.  The  choice  made  may  be  good  or  ill, 
as  chance  and  time  may  dictate,  but  the  impel 
ling  excitement  forces  a  choice.  What  if  it  be 
ill  ?  What  if  to-morrow  a  male  who  is  a  far 
better  complement  should  appear  ?  The  time  is 
now.  Nature  is  not  neglectful,  and  well  she 
knows  the  disaster  of  delay.  She  is  prodigal  of 
the  individual  and  is  satisfied  with  one  match 
out  of  many  mismatches,  just  as  she  is  satisfied 
that  of  a  million  cod  eggs  one  only  should  de 
velop  into  a  full-grown  cod.  And  so  this  love  of 
the  human  in  no  wise  differs  from  that  of  the 
sparrow  which  forgets  preservation  in  procrea 
tion.  Thus  nature  tricks  her  creature  and  the 
race  lives  on. 

For  the  lesser  creatures  the  trick  serves  the 

purpose  well.     There  is  need  for  a  compelling 

madness,  else  would  self-preservation  overcome 

procreation  and  there   be   no  lesser   creatures. 

[118] 


FROM   WAGE  TO   KEMPTON 

And  man  is  content  to  rest  coequal  with  the 
beast  in  the  matter  of  mating.  Notwithstanding 
his  intelligence,  which  has  made  him  the  master 
of  matter  and  enabled  him  to  enslave  the  great 
blind  forces,  he  is  unable  to  perpetuate  his 
species  without  the  aid  of  the  impelling  mad 
ness.  Nay,  men  will  not  have  it  otherwise ; 
and  when  an  individual  urges  that  his  reason 
has  placed  him  above  the  beast,  and  that,  with 
out  the  impelling  madness,  he  can  mate  with 
greater  wisdom  and  potency,  then  the  'poets  and 
singers  rise  up  and  fling  potsherds  at  him.  To 
improve  upon  nature  by  draining  a  malarial 
swamp  is  permitted  him ;  to  improve  upon 
nature's  methods  and  breed  swifter  carrier- 
pigeons  and  finer  horses  than  she  has  ever 
bred  is  also  permitted  ;  but  to  improve  upon 
nature  in  the  breeding  of  the  human,  that  is  a 
sacrilege  which  cannot  be  condoned  !  Down 
with  him  !  He  is  a  brute  to  question  our  divine 
Love,  God-given  and  glorious ! 

Ah,  Dane,  remember  the  first  dim  yearning 
of  divided  life,  and  the  soils  and  smirches  and 
frenzies  put  upon  it  by  the  spawn  of  multitudi 
nous  generations.  There  is  your  love,  the 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

whole  history  of  it.  There  is  no  intrinsic  shame 
in  the  thing  itsdf,  but  the  shame  lies  in  that  we 
are  not  greater  than  it. 

HERBERT. 


[120] 


XVIII 
FROM   THE   SAME  TO  THE   SAME 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 
April  4,  19—. 

THERE  were  several  things  in  your  let 
ter  which  I  forgot  to  answer.     Much 
of  beauty  and  wonder  is  there  in  what 
you  have  said,  and  unrelated  facts  without  end. 
Many  of  those  facts  I  endorse  heartily,  but  it 
seems   to  me   you   fail  to   embody  them  in  a 
coherent  argument. 

I  have  stated,  in  so  many  words,  that  there 
are  two  functions  common  to  all  life  —  nutri 
tion  and  reproduction.  Of  this  you  have  missed 
the  significance  in  your  rejection  of  my  defini 
tion  of  love,  so  I  must  explain  further.  Unless 
these  two  functions  be  carried  on,  life  must  per 
ish  from  the  planet.  Therefore  they  are  the 
most  essential  concerns  of  life.  The  individual 
must  preserve  its  own  life  and  the  life  of  its 
[IM] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

kind.  It  is  more  prone  to  preserve  its  own  life 
than  the  life  of  its  kind,  less  prone  to  sacrifice 
itself  for  its  species.  So  natural  selection  has 
developed  a  passion  of  madness  which  forces 
the  individual  to  make  the  sacrifice.  In  all 
forms  of  life  below  man  the  struggle  for  exist 
ence  is  keen  and  merciless.  The  least  weak 
ness  in  an  individual  is  the  signal  for  its 
destruction.  Therefore  it  is  counter  to  the  wel 
fare  of  the  individual  to  do  aught  that  will  tend 
to  weaken  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the  law  is 'that 
the  individual  must  procreate.  But  proc/eation 
means  a  weakening  and  a  temporary^  state  of 
helplessness.  Problem  :  how  may  they  individ 
ual  be  brought  to  procreate  ?  to  do  that  which 
is  inimical  to  its  welfare  ?  Answer :  it  must  be 
forced  by  something  deeper  than  reason,  and 
that  something  is  unreasoning  passion.  Did  the 
individual  reason  on  the  matter,  it  would  cer 
tainly  abstain.  It  is  because  the  passion  is 
not  rational  that  life  has  persisted  to  this  day. 
Man,  coming  up  from  the  walks  of  lower  life, 
brought  with  him  this  most  necessary  passion. 
Developing  imagination,  he  commingled  the 
two ;  love  was  the  product. 

[122] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

Now,  because  of  our  imagination,  do  not  let 
us  confuse  the  issue.  The  great  task  demanded 
of  man  is  reproduction.  He  is  urged  by  pas 
sion  to  perform  this  task.  Passion,  working 
through  the  imagination,  produces  love.  Pas 
sion  is  the  impelling  factor,  imagination  the  dis 
turbing  factor;  and  the  disturbance  of  passion 
by  imagination  produces  love. 

Stripped  of  all  superfluities,  what  function 
does  love  serve  in  the  scheme  of  life  ?  That  of 
reproduction.  Nay,  now,  do  not  object,  Dane; 
for  you  state  the  same  thing,  though  less  clearly, 
in  your  own  definition  of  love.  You  say,  "  Love 
is  the  awakening  of  the  personality  to  the  beauty 
and  worth  of  some  one  being,"  and  is  a  desire 
to  merge  the  life  with  that  of  the  beloved  being. 
In  other  words,  your  definition  tells  that  the 
passion  for  perpetuation  is  the  cause  of  love, 
and  perpetuation  the  end  to  be  accomplished. 
Thus  nature  tricks  her  creature  and  the  race 
lives  on. 

Then  you  say  negatively,  "  Love  is  not  a 
disorder  of  mind  and  body,  not  a  madness,  since 
it  arises  in  the  eternally  most  valuable,  since  it 
is  the  culmination  of  high  processes,  and  since 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

it  makes  for  strength  and  sanity  of  vision  and 
happiness."  I  have  shown  the  value  of  passion, 
and  the  processes  of  which  love  is  the  culmina 
tion,  and  I  have  shown  that  both  are  unreason 
ing  and  why  they  are  unreasoning.  Do  you 
demonstrate  where  I  am  wrong. 

Then  again,  you  dare  a  formula  :  "  In  the  be 
ginning  love  arose  in  the  passion  for  perpetua 
tion  ;  to-day  the  passion  for  perpetuation  arises 
in  love."  It  is  clever,  but  is  it  true  ?  Yes,  as 
true  as  this  formula  I  dare  to  pattern  after 
yours :  In  the  beginning  man  ate  because  he 
was  hungry ;  to-day  he  is  hungry  because  he 
eats. 

There  are  many  things  more  I  should  like  to 
answer,  but  I  am  writing  this  'twixt  breakfast 
and  lecture  hour,  and  time  presses  and  students 
will  not  wait. 

HERBERT. 


XIX 
FROM  DANE  KEMPTON  TO  HERBERT  WAGE 

LONDON, 

3  A  QUEEN'S  ROAD,  CHELSEA,  S.W., 
April  22,  19 — . 

NATURE  tricks  her  creatures  and  the 
race  lives  on,  and  I,  overcivilized,  de 
cadent  dreamer  that  I  am,  rejoice  that 
the  past  binds  us,  am  proud  of  a  history  so  old 
and  so  significant  and  of  an  heritage  so  mar 
vellous.  Nature  tricks  her  creatures  and  the 
race  lives  on,  and  I  am  prayerfully  grateful. 
The  difference  between  us  is  that  you  are  not. 
You  are  suffering  from,  what  has  been  well 
called,  the  sadness  of  science.  You  accept  the 
thesis  of  a  common  origin  only  to  regret  it. 
You  discover  that  romance  has  a  history,  and  lo! 
romance  has  vanished  !  You  are  a  Werther  of 
science,  sad  to  the  heart  with  a  melancholy  all 
your  own  and  dropping  inert  tears  on  the  shrine 
of  your  accumulated  facts. 

[125] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

In  this  you  are  with  your  generation.  Just 
as  every  age  has  its  prevailing  disease  of  the 
body  so  has  it  its  characteristic  spiritual  ailment. 
To-day  we  are  in  the  throes  of  travail.  In  our 
arms  is  the  child  of  our  ever-delving  intellect, 
but  another  deliverance  is  about  to  be  and  the 
suffering  is  great.  After  science  comes  the 
philosophy  of  science.  Our  eyes  are  bathed  in 
Revelation,  but  upon  our  ears  the  music  of  the 
Word  has  not  yet  fallen.  Until  that  time  when 
the  meaning  of  it  all  shall  flash  out  upon  the 
world,  the  race  will  be  hidebound  in  callousness 
and  in  faint-hearted  melancholy.  As  yet  we 
do  not  know  what  to  do  with  all  which  we  know, 
and  we  are  afflicted  with  the  pessimism  of  inertia 
and  the  pessimism  of  dyspepsia.  Intellectually, 
we  have  been  living  too  high  the  last  hundred 
years  or  so.  In  this  is  the  secret  of  our  differ 
ence.  You  insist  upon  cheapening  life  for  your 
self  because  it  has  become  evident  to  you  that 
the  phenomenon  is  common,  and  I,  on  the  other 
hand,  shout  its  glory  because  it  is  universal.  To 
myself  I  am  breathless  with  wonder,  but  to  you 
and  in  my  work  I  needs  must  shout  it. 

Here  let  me  be  clear.  I  take  it  that  you  are 
[I26] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

under  the  sway  of  a  contemporary  mood,  that 
your  position  is  an  accidental  phase  of  to-day's 
materialism.  Broadly,  our  quarrel  is  that  of 
pessimism  and  optimism,  only  your  pessimism  is 
unconscious,  which  makes  it  the  more  dangerous 
to  yourself.  You  are  too  sad  to  know  that  you 
are  not  happy  or  to  care.  Does  my  diagnosis 
surprise  you  ?  Analyze  the  argument  of  your 
last  letter.  You  trace  the  growth  of  the  emotion 
of  love  from  protoplasm  to  man.  You  follow 
the  progress  of  the  force  which  is  stronger  than 
hunger  and  cold  and  swifter  and  more  final  than 
death,  from  its  potential  state  in  the  unicellular 
stage  where  life  goes  on  by  division,  up  through 
the  multifarious  forms  of  instinctive  animal  mat 
ing,  till  you  reach  the  love  of  the  sexes  in  the 
human  world.  And  the  exploring  leads  you  to 
the  belief  that  nothing  has  been  reserved  for 
the  human  worth  his  cherishing,  to  the  conviction 
that  the  plan  of  life  is  simple  and  unvaried  and 
therefore  unacceptable. 

You  raise  the  wail  of  Ecclesiastes,  "All  is 

vanity  and  a  striving  after  wind,  and  there  is 

no  profit  under  the  sun."     The  Preacher  and 

Omar  and   Swinburne  are  pathetically  human, 

[127] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

and  we  who  are  also  human  respond  to  their 
finality,  to  their  quizzical  indifference  and  their 
stinging  resentment.  We  also  say,  "Vanity 
of  vanities,"  and  bow  our  heads  murmuring 
"Ilicet,"  and  stretch  out  our  hands  to  "turn 
down  an  empty  glass,"  but  all  this  in  twilight 
moods  when  a  dimness  as  of  dying  rests  upon 
the  soul.  There  are  a  few  with  whom  it  is 
always  morning,  and  others  who  remember 
something  of  the  radiance  of  the  young  day 
even  in  the  heart  of  midnight.  These  dis 
prove  the  postulates  of  sameness  and  satiety, 
these  are  not  smitten  by  the  seen  fact  as  are 
you  of  the  microscopic  retina,  these  "see  life 
steadily  and  see  it  whole." 

We  need  not  fear  the  label  of  an  idea.  When 
I  say  that  your  position  is  that  of  the  pessimist, 
it  is  not  more  of  an  accusation  than  if  I  said 
it  was  that  of  the  optimist.  The  thing  to 
concern  oneself  with  is  the  question,  "Which 
of  these  makes  the  nearer  approach  to  the 
truth?"  You  have  been  asking  me,  "What 
is  love  worth  ? "  And  you  have  answered 
your  question  often  enough  and  to  your  satis 
faction,  "In  itself  it  is  worth  nothing,  being 
[128] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

but  the  catspaw  to  scheming  forces."  With 
your  denial  of  any  intrinsic  beauty  in  the 
emotion,  with  your  acceptance  of  it  as  an  un 
fortunate  incident  in  human  affairs,  comes  a 
vague  hope  that  the  race  will  outgrow  this 
force.  Here  is  your  rift  in  the  cloud.  You 
picture  a  scientific  Utopia  where  there  are  no 
lovers  and  no  back-harkings  to  the  primitive 
passion,  and  you  appoint  yourself  pioneer  to 
the  promised  land  of  the  children  of  biology. 
Ah !  I  speak  as  if  I  were  vexed  instead  of 
simply  being  sure  I  am  in  the  right.  I  wish 
to  help  you  see  that  there  is  another  reading 
to  your  facts.  If  love  is  essentially  the  same 
from  protoplasm  to  man,  it  does  not  for  this 
reason  become  worthless.  By  virtue  of  being 
universal  it  is  enhanced  and  most  divinely 
humanly  binding.  You  tell  me  that  love  is 
involuntary,  compelled  by  external  forces  as 
old  as  time  and  as  binding  as  instinct,  and  I 
say  that  because  of  this,  life  is  finally  for  love. 
What !  The  cavemen,  and  the  birds,  too,  and 
the  fish  and  the  plants,  forsooth !  What ! 
The  inorganic,  perhaps,  as  well  as  the  organic, 
swayed  by  this  force  which  is  wholly  physical 
K  [129] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

and  yet  wholly  psychical !  And  does  it  not 
fire  you?  You  are  not  caught  up  and  held 
by  this  giant  fact?  You  find  that  love  is 
not  sporadic,  not  individual,  that  it  does  not 
begin  with  you  or  end  with  you,  that  it  does 
not  dissociate  you,  and  you  do  not  warm  to 
the  world-organic  kinship,  you  do  not  hear  the 
overword  of  the  poets  and  philosophers  of  all 
times,  you  do  not  see  the  visions  that  glad 
dened  the  star-forgotten  nights  of  saints  ? 

The  same  surprise  sweeps  over  the  mind  in 
reading  Ecclesiastes.  Is  it  a  sorry  scheme  of 
things  that  one  generation  goes  and  another 
comes  and  the  world  abides  forever?  If  the 
same  generation  peopled  the  earth  for  a  million 
years,  the  dignity  of  life  would  not  be  increased. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  have  the  assurance  of 
eternal  life  as  the  dole  for  having  come  to  be, 
in  order  to  live  under  the  aspect  of  eternity. 
It  is  larger  to  be  short-lived,  to  be  but  a  wave 
of  the  sea  rolling  for  one  sunful  day  and  starry 
night  toward  a  great  inclusiveness.  It  is  a 
higher  majesty  to  be  inalien  and  a  part  —  a 
ringed  ripple  in  the  Vastness  —  than  to  lie 
broad  and  smiling  in  meaningless  endlessness. 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

So  it  is  a  strange  thing  that  men  who  are 
schooled  by  evolution  to  relate  themselves  to 
all  that  exists,  and  to  seek  for  near  kinships, 
should  lament  that  there  is  no  new  thing 
under  the  sun.  And  whose  .eye  would  be 
satisfied  with  seeing  and  whose  ear  with  hear 
ing?  Who  would  rather  have  truth  than  the 
power  to  seek  it  ?  There  is  a  way  of  reading 
Ecclesiastes  and  Schopenhauer  with  a  trium 
phant  lilt  in  the  voice.  After  all,  it  is  the 
modulation  that  carries  the  message  of  the 
text.  When  you  write  the  history  of  love,  I 
find  it  fair  reading.  When  you  tell  me  love 
is  primal  and  engrossing,  I  hold  it  the  more 
a  sin  to  crouch  away  from  its  fires. 

"  Love  is  the  assertion  of  the  will  to  live 
as  a  definitely  determined  individual."  This 
is  Schopenhauer's  thesis  and  (unnecessarily 
enough)  he  apologizes  for  it,  as  if  it  belittled 
love  to  say  that  it  affects  man  in  his  essentia 
aeterna !  The  genius  of  the  race  takes  the 
lover  conscript  and  makes  him  a  soldier  in 
life's  battalions.  "The  genius  of  the  race,"  a 
metaphysical  term,  but  meaning  what  you 
do  when  you  speak  of  the  function  of  love. 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

Schopenhauer  is  a  pessimist  consciously,  you, 
unconsciously ;  and  you  both  have  missed  the 
living  value  of  your  facts.  "  Love  is  ruled 
by  race  welfare,"  says  Schopenhauer.  "  It  (the 
race  welfare)  alone  corresponds  to  the  pro 
foundness  with  which  it  is  felt,  to  the  serious 
ness  with  which  it  appears,  to  the  importance 
which  it  attributes  even  to  the  trifling  details 
of  its  sphere  and  occasion."  Love  concerns 
itself  with  "the  composition  of  the  next  gen 
eration,"  therefore  you  find  it  common  as  the 
commonplace,  therefore  Schopenhauer  regards 
it  as  a  force  treacherous  to  happiness,  since 
to  live  is  to  be  miserable.  "These  lovers 
are  the  traitors  who  seek  to  perpetuate  the 
whole  want  and  drudgery  which  would  other 
wise  speedily  reach  an  end ;  this  they  wish  to 
frustrate  as  others  like  them  have  frustrated  it 
before." 

Because  love  frustrates  the  death  of  the  race, 
it  is  the  joy  of  my  senses  and  the  goal  of  my 
striving. 

Says  Schopenhauer :  "  Through  love  man 
shows  that  the  species  lies  closer  to  him  than 
the  individual,  and  he  lives  more  immediately  in 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

the  former  than  in  the  latter.  Why  does  the 
lover  hang  with  complete  abandon  on  the  eyes 
of  his  chosen  one,  and  is  ready  to  make  every 
sacrifice  for  her?  Because  it  is  his  immortal 
part  that  longs  after  her,  while  it  is  merely  his 
mortal  part  that  desires  everything  else."  Be 
cause  this  is  so,  love  is  the  God  of  my  faith. 

You  see  where  our  subject  takes  us  !  And 
all  the  while  I  care  nothing  for  the  points  of 
argument  except  where  they  prick  you  from 
your  position.  One  must  scale  the  skies  and 
swim  the  seas  in  order  to  reach  you.  Well, 
have  I  approached  within  your  hearing  ? 

I  was  sitting  amongst  the  fennel  in  Barbara's 
garden  when  your  letter  was  brought,  and  I 
read  it  twice  to  make  sure  I  understood.  When 
the  sun  lies  warm  on  waving  fennel  and  a  city 
is  before  you,  mysterious  in  a  veil  of  mist,  it  is 
easier  to  feel  love  than  to  think  about  it.  For  a 
while,  it  was  difficult  to  see  the  bearing  of  the 
data  which  you  marshalled  so  well  in  defence 
of  your  Denial.  You  went  far  in  order  to 
answer  why  you  are  content  to  marry  a  woman 
you  do  not  love.  Your  methods  are  not  the 
methods  of  the  practical  mind.  I  am  glad  for 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

that.  You  idealize  your  attitude,  you  go  far 
back  in  time,  you  enmesh  yourself  in  theories 
and  generalizations,  you  ride  your  imagination 
proudly,  in  order  to  reconcile  yourself  to  some 
thing  which  suggests  itself  as  more  ideal  than 
that  for  which  the  unreasoning  heart  hungers. 
You  are  sad,  but  you  are  not  practical  and  you 
are  not  blase. 

Of  Barbara,  of  myself,  and  of  London  doings, 
this  is  no  time  to  write.  Tell  Hester  your 
friend  thinks  of  her. 

Yours   with   great  memories   and   greater 
hopes, 

DANE  KEMPTON. 


XX 

FROM  HERBERT  WAGE  TO  DANE  KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 
May  1 8,  19 — . 

I  STAND  aloof  and  laugh  at  myself  and 
you.  Oh,  believe  me,  I  see  it  very  clearly 
—  myself  in  the  heyday  and  cocksureness 
of  youth,  flinging  at  you,  with  much  energy  and 
little  skill,  .my  immature  generalizations  from 
science ;  and  you  with  an  elderly  beneficence 
and  tolerance,  smiling  shrewdly  and  affection 
ately  upon  me,  secure  in  the  knowledge  that 
sooner  or  later  I  am  sure  to  get  through  with  it 
all  and  join  you  in  your  broad  and  placid  phi 
losophy.  It  is  the  penalty  age  exacts  from  youth. 
Well,  I  accept  it. 

So  I  am  suffering  from  the  sadness  of  science. 
I  had  been  prone  to  ascribe  my  feelings  to  the 
passion  of  science.  But  it  does  not  matter  in 
the  least  —  only,  somehow,  I  would  rather  you 


KEMPTON-WACE    LETTERS 

did  not  misunderstand  me  so  dreadfully.  I  do 
not  raise  the  wail  of  Ecclesiastes.  I  am  not  sad, 
but  glad.  I  discover  romance  has  a  history,  and 
in  history  I  am  quicker  to  read  the  romance.  I 
accept  the  thesis  of  a  common  origin,  not  to 
regret  it,  but  to  make  the  best  of  it.  That  is 
the  key  to  my  life  —  to  make  the  best  of  it,  but 
not  drearily,  with  the  passiveness  of  a  slave, 
but  passionately  and  with  desire.  Invention  is 
an  artifice  man  employs  to  overcome  the  round 
about.  It  is  the  short  cut  to  satisfaction.  It 
makes  man  potent,  so  that  he  can  do  more 
things  in  a  span.  I  am  a  worker  and  doer. 
The  common  origin  is  not  a  despair  to  me ;  it 
has  a  value,  and  it  strengthens  my  arm  in  the 
work  to  be  done. 

The  play  and  interplay  of  force  and  matter 
we  call  "evolution."  The  more  man  under 
stands  force  and  matter,  and  the  play  and  inter 
play,  the  more  is  he  enabled  to  direct  the  trend 
of  evolution,  at  least  in  human  affairs.  Here  is 
a  great  and  weltering  mass  of  individuals  which 
we  call  society.  The  problem  is  :  How  may  it 
be  directed  so  that  the  sum  of  its  happiness 
greatens  ?  This  is  my  work.  I  would  invent, 


FROM   WAGE   TO   KEMPTON 

overcome  the  roundabout,  seek  the  short  cut. 
And  I  consider  all  matter,  all  force,  all  factors, 
so  that  I  may  invent  wisely  and  justly.  And 
considering  all  factors,  I  consider  romance,  and 
I  consider  you.  I  weigh  your  value  in  the 
scheme  of  things,  and  your  necessity,  and  I  find 
that  you  are  both  valuable  and  necessary. 

But  the  history  of  progress  is  the  history  of 
the   elimination   of   waste.     One   boy,   running 
twenty-five  machines,  turns  out  a  thousand  pairs^ 
of  socks  a  day.     His  granny  toiled  a  thousand  \ 
days   to  do  the  same.     Waste  has  been  elimi 
nated,  the  roundabout  overcome.     And  so  with 
romance.     I    strive    not   to   be   blinded   by  its     • 
beauty,  but  to  give  it  exact  appraisal.     Often- / 
times   it   is  the  roundabout,  the  wasteful,  angt 
must  needs  be  eliminated.    Thus  chivalry  and  its 
romance  vanished  before  the  chemist  and   the 
engineer,  before  the  man  who  mixed  gunpowder 
and  the  man  who  dug  ditches. 

I  melancholy  ?  Sir,  I  have  not  the  time  —  so 
may  I  model  my  answer  after  the  great  Agassiz. 
I  am  not  a  Werther  of  science,  but  rather  you 
are  a  John  Ruskin  of  these  latter  days.  He 
wept  at  the  profanation  of  the  world,  at  the 


— 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

steam-launches  violating  the  sanctity  of  the 
Venetian  canals  and  the  electric  cars  running 
beneath  the  shadow  of  the  pyramids ;  and  you 
weep  at  the  violation  of  like  sanctities  in  the 
spiritual  world.  A  gondola  is  more  beautiful, 
but  the  steam-launch  takes  one  places,  and  an 
electric  car  is  more  comfortable  than  the  hump 
of  a  camel.  It  is  too  bad,  but  waste  romance,  as 
waste  energy,  must  be  eliminated. 

Enough.  I  shall  go  on  with  the  argument.  I 
have  drawn  the  line  between  pre-nuptial  love 
and  post-nuptial  love.  The  former,  which  is  the 
real  sexual  love,  the  love  of  which  the  poets  sing 
and  which  "makes  the  world  go  round,"  I  have 
called  romantic  love.  The  latter,  which  in  ac 
tuality  is  sex  comradeship,  I  call  conjugal  affec 
tion  or  friendship.  To  be  more  definite,  I  shall 
call  the  one  "love,"  the  other  "affection"  or 
"friendship."  Now  love  is  not  affection  or 
friendship,  yet  they  are  ofttimes  mistaken,  one 
for  the  other,  for  it  so  happens  that  the  friend 
ship,  which  is  akin  to  conjugal  affection,  is  in 
many  instances  pre-nuptial  in  its  development  — 
a  token,  I  take  it,  of  the  higher  evolution  of  the 
human,  an  audaciousness  which  dares  to  shake 


FROM   WAGE  TO   KEMPTON 

off  the  blind  passion  and  evade  nature's  trick  as 
man  evaded  when  he  harnessed  steam  and  rested 
his  feet.  It  is  of  common  occurrence  that  a  man 
and  woman,  through  long  and  tried  friendship, 
reach  a  fine  appreciation  of  each  other  and 
marry ;  and  the  run  of  such  marriages  is  the 
happiest.  Neither  blinded  nor  frenzied  by  the 
unreasoned  passion  of  love,  they  have  weighed 
each  other,  —  faults,  virtues,  and  all,  —  and  found 
a  compatibility  strong  enough  to  withstand  the 
strain  of  years  and  misfortune,  and  wise  enough 
to  compromise  the  individual  clashes  which  must 
inevitably  arise  when  soul  shares  never  ending 
bed  and  board  with  soul.  They  have  achieved 
before  marriage  what  the  love-impelled  man  and 
woman  must  achieve  after  marriage  if  they 
would  continue  to  live  together ;  that  is,  they 
have  sought  and  found  compatibility  before 
binding  themselves,  instead  of  binding  them 
selves  first  and  then  seeking  if  there  be  com 
patibility  or  not. 

Let  me  apparently  digress  for  the  moment 
and  bring  all  clear  and  straight.  The  emotions 
have  no  basis  in  reason.  We  smile  or  are  sad 
at  the  manifestation  of  jealousy  in  another.  We 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

smile  or  are  sad  because  of  the  unreasonableness 
of  it.  Likewise  we  smile  at  the  antics  of  the  lover. 
The  absurdities  he  is  guilty  of,  the  capers  he 
cuts,  excite  our  philosophic  risibility.  We  say 
he  is  mad  as  a  March  hare.  (Have  you  ever 
wondered,  Dane,  why  a  March  hare  is  deemed 
mad  ?  The  saying  is  a  pregnant  one.)  How 
ever,  love,  as  you  have  tacitly  agreed,  is  unrea 
sonable.  In  fact,  in  all  the  walks  of  animal  life 
no  rational  sanction  can  be  found  for  the  love- 
acts  of  the  individual.  Each  love  act  is  a  hazard 
ing  of  the  individual's  life ;  this  we  know,  and  it  is 
only  impelled  to  perform  such  acts  because  of  the 
madness  of  the  trick,  which,  though  it  strikes  at 
the  particular  life,  makes  for  the  general  life. 

So  I  think  there  is  no  discussion  over  the  fact 
that  this  emotion  of  love  has  no  basis  in  reason. 
As  the  old  French  proverb  runs,  "The  first 
sigh  of  love  is  the  last  of  wisdom."  On  the 
other  hand,  the  individual  not  yet  afflicted  by 
love,  or  recovered  from  it,  conducts  his  life  in  a 
rational  manner.  Every  act  he  performs  has  a 
basis  in  reason  —  so  long  as  it  is  not  some  other 
of  the  emotional  acts.  The  stag,  locking  horns 
with  a  rival  over  the  possession  of  a  doe,  is 
[140] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

highly  irrational ;  but  the  same  stag,  hiding  its 
trail  from  the  hounds  by  taking  to  water,  is 
performing  a  highly  rational  act.  And  so  with 
the  human.  We  model  our  lives  on  a  basis  of 
reason  —  of  the  best  reason  we  possess.  We 
do  not  put  the  scullery  in  the  drawing-room,  nor 
do  we  repair  our  bicycles  in  the  bedchamber. 
We  strive  not  to  exceed  our  income,  and  we 
deliberate  long  before  investing  our  savings. 
We  demand  good  recommendations  from  our 
cook,  and  take  letters  of  introduction  with  us 
when  we  go  abroad.  We  overlook  the  petulant 
manner  of  our  friend  who  rowed  in  the  losing 
barge  at  the  races,  and  we  forgive  on  the  mo 
ment  the  sharp  answer  of  the  man  who  has  sat 
three  nights  by  a  sick-bed.  And  we  do  all  this 
because  our  acts  have  a  basis  in  reason. 

Comes  the  lover,  tricked  by  nature,  blind  of 
passion,  impelled  madly  toward  the  loved  one. 
He  is  as  blind  to  her  salient  imperfections  as  he 
is  to  her  petty  vices.  He  does  not  interrogate 
her  disposition  and  temperament,  or  speculate 
as  to  how  they  will  coordinate  with  his  for  two- 
score  years  and  odd.  He  questions  nothing, 
desires  nothing,  save  to  possess  her.  And  this 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

is  the  paradox  :  By  nature  he  is  driven  to  contract 
a  temporary  tie,  which,  by  social  observance  and 
demand,  must  endure  for  a  lifetime.  Too  much 
stress  cannot  be  laid  upon  this,  Dane,  for  herein 
lies  the  secret  of  the  whole  difficulty. 

But  we  go  on  with  our  lover.  In  the  throes 
of  desire — for  desire  is  pain,  whether  it  be 
heart  hunger  or  belly  hunger  —  he  seeks  to  pos 
sess  the  loved  one.  The  desire  is  a  pain  which 
seeks  easement  through  possession.  Love  can 
not  in  its  very  nature  be  peaceful  or  content. 
It  is  a  restlessness,  an  un satisfaction.  I  can 
grant  a  lasting  love  just  as  I  can  grant  a  lasting 
unsatisfaction ;  but  the  lasting  love  cannot  be 
coupled  with  possession,  for  love  is  pain  and 
desire  and  possession  is  easement  and  fulfilment. 
Pursuit  and  possession  are  accompanied  by 
states  of  consciousness  so  wide  apart  that  they 
can  never  be. united.  What  is  true  of  pursuit 
cannot  be  true  of  possession,  no  more  than  the 
child,  grasping  the  bright  ball,  can  deem  it  the 
most  wonderful  thing  in  the  world  —  an  appraise 
ment  which  it  certainly  made  when  the  ball  was 
beyond  reach. 

Let  us  suppose  the  loved  one  is  as  madly  im- 


FROM   WAGE   TO   KEMPTON 

pelled  toward  the  lover.  In  a  few  days,  in  an 
hour,  nay,  in  an  instant  —  for  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  love  at  first  sight — this  man  and 
woman,  two  unrelated  individuals,  who  may 
never  have  seen  each  other  before,  conceive  a 
passion,  greater,  intenser  than  all  other  affec 
tions,  friendships,  and  social  relations.  So  great, 
so  intense  is  it,  that  the  world  could  crumble 
to  star-dust  so  long  as  their  souls  rushed 
together.  If  necessary,  they  would  break  all 
ties,  forsake  all  friends,  abandon  all  blood  kin, 
run  away  from  all  moral  responsibilities.  There 
can  be  no  discussion,  Dane.  We  see  it  every 
day,  for  love  is  the  most  perfectly  selfish  thing 
in  the  universe. 

But  this  is  easily  reconcilable  with  the  scheme 
of  things.  The  true  lover  is  the  child  of  nature. 
Natural  selection  has  determined  that  exogamy 
produces  fitter  progeny  than  endogamy.  Cross 
fertilization  has  made  stronger  individuals  and 
types,  and  likewise  it  has  maintained  them.  On 
the  other  hand,  were  family  affection  stronger 
than  love,  there  would  be  much  intermarriage 
of  blood  relations  and  a  consequent  weakening 
of  the  breed.  And  in  such  cases  it  would  be 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

stamped  out  by  the  stronger-breeding  exogamists. 
Here  and  there,  even  of  old  time,  the  wise  men 
recognized  it ;  and  we  so  recognize  it  to-day,  as 
witness  our  bars  against  consanguineous  marriage. 

But  be  not  misled  into  the  belief  that  love  is 
finer  and  higher  than  affection  and  friendship, 
that  the  yielding  to  its  blandishment  is  higher 
wisdom  on  the  part  of  our  lovers.  Not  so ;  they 
are  puppets  and  know  and  think  nothing  about 
it.  They  come  of  those  who  yielded  likewise  in 
the  past.  They  obey  forces  beyond  them,  greater 
than  they,  their  kind,  and  all  life,  great  as  the 
great  forces  of  the  physical  universe.  Our  lovers 
are  children  of  nature,  natural  and  uninventive. 
Duty  and  moral  responsibility  are  less  to  them 
than  passion.  They  will  obey  and  procreate, 
though  the  heavens  roll  up  as  a  scroll  and  all 
things  come  to  judgment.  And  they  are  right 
if  this  is  what  we  understand  to  be  "  the  bloom, 
the  charm,  the  smile  of  life." 

Yet  man  is  man  because  he  chanced  to 
develop  intelligence  instead  of  instinct ;  other 
wise  he  would  to  this  day  have  remained  among 
the  anthropoid  apes.  He  has  turned  away  from 
nature,  become  unnatural,  as  it  were,  disliked 

[i44] 


FROM   WAGE  TO   KEMPTON 

the  earth  upon  which  he  found  himself,  and 
changed  the  face  of  it  somewhat  to  his  liking. 
His  trend  has  been,  and  still  is,  to  perform 
more  and  more  acts  with  a  rational  sanction. 
He  has  developed  a  moral  nature,  made  laws, 
and  by  the  sheer  force  of  his  will  and  reason 
curbed  his  lyings  and  his  lusts. 

However,  our  lovers  are  natural  and  unin- 
ventive.  They  get  married.  Pursuit,  with  all 
its  Tantalus  delights,  its  sighings  and  its  songs, 
is  gone,  never  to  return.  And  in  its  place 
is  possession,  which  is  satisfaction,  familiarity, 
knowledge.  It  heralds  the  return  of  rationality, 
the  return  to  duty  of  the  weighing  and  measur 
ing  qualities  of  the  mind.  Our  lovers  discover 
each  other  to  be  mere  man  and  woman  after  all. 
That  ethereal  substance  which  the  man  took  for 
the  body  of  the  loved  one  becomes  flesh  and 
blood,  prone  to  the  common  weaknesses  and  ills 
of  flesh  and  blood.  He,  on  the  other  hand, 
betrays  little  petulancies  of  disposition,  little 
faults  and  predispositions  of  which  she  never 
dreamed  in  the  pre-nuptial  days,  and  which  she 
now  finds  eminently  distasteful.  But  at  first 
these  things  are  not  openly  unpleasant.  There 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

are  no  scenes.  One  or  the  other  gives  in  on 
the  instant,  without  self -betrayal,  and  one  or  the 
other  retires  to  have  a  secret  cry  or  to  ruminate 
about  it  over  a  cigar  —  the  first  faint  hints,  I 
may  slyly  suggest,  of  the  return  of  rationality. 
They  are  beginning  to  think. 

Ah,  these  are  little  things,  you  say.  Precisely ; 
wherefore  I  lay  emphasis  upon  them.  The  sum 
of  the  innumerable  little  things  becomes  a  mighty 
thing  to  test  the  human  soul.  Moreover,  many 
a  home  has  been  broken  because  of  disagree 
ment  as  to  the  uses  or  abuses  of  couch  cushions, 
and  more  than  one  divorce  induced  by  the  linger 
ing  of  tobacco  odours  in  the  curtains. 

If  the  marriage  of  our  lovers  conform  to  the 
majority  of  marriages,  the  first  year  of  their 
wedded  life  will  determine  whether  they  are 
able  to  share  bed  and  board  through  the  length 
ening  years.  For  this  first  year  - —  often  the  first 
months  of  it  —  marks  the  transition  from  love 
to  conjugal  affection,  or  witnesses  a  rupture 
which  nothing  less  than  omnipotence  can  ever 
mend.  In  this  first  year  a  serious  readjustment 
must  take  place.  Unreason,  as  a  basis  for  the 
relation,  must  give  way  to  reason ;  blind,  igno- 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

rant,  selfish  little  love  must  flutter  away,  so  that 
friendship,  clear-eyed  and  wise,  may  step  in. 
There  will  come  moments  when  wills  clash  and 
desires  do  not  chime ;  these  must  be  moments 
of  sober  thought  and  compromise,  when  one  or 
the  other  sacrifices  self  on  the  altar  of  their 
nascent  friendship.  Upon  this  ability  to  com 
promise  depends  their  married  happiness.  Re 
turning  to  the  rationality  which  they  forsook 
during  mating-time,  they  cannot  live  a  joint 
rational  existence  without  compromising.  If 
they  be  compatible,  they  will  gradually  grow  to 
fit,  each  with  the  other,  into  the  common  life; 
compromise,  on  certain  definite  points,  will  be 
come  automatic ;  and  for  the  rest  they  will 
exhibit  a  tacit  and  reasoned  recognition  of  the 
imperfections  and  frailties  of  life. 

All  this  reason  will  dictate.  If  they  be  in 
capable  of  rising  to  compromise,  sacrifice,  and 
unselfishness,  reason  will  dictate  separation.  In 
such  case,  when  they  will  have  become  rational 
once  more,  they  will  reason  the  impossibility  of 
a  continued  relation  and  give  it  up.  In  which 
case  the  true-love  disciple  may  contend  that 
there  was  no  real  love  in  the  beginning.  But 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

he  is  wrong.  It  was  just  as  real  as  that  of  any 
marriage,  only  it  failed  in  the  post-nuptial  quest 
after  compatibility.  In  all  marriages  love  — 
passionate,  romantic  love  —  must  disappear,  to 
be  replaced  by  conjugal  affection  or  by  nothing. 
The  former  are  the  happy  marriages,  the  latter 
the  mistaken  ones. 

As  I  close,  the  saying  of  La  Bruyere  comes, 
to  me,  "  The  love  which  arises  suddenly  takes 
longest  to  cure."  This  generalization  upon  all 
the  love-affairs  within  the  scope  of  a  single  life 
time  cannot  but  be  true,  and  it  is  quite  in  line 
with  the  general  argument.  I  have  shown  that 
the  love  (so  called)  which  grows  slowly  is  akin 
to  friendship,  that  it  is  friendship,  in  fact,  con 
jugal  friendship.  On  the  other  hand,  the  more 
sudden  a  love  the  more  intense  it  must  be ;  also 
the  less  rationality  can  it  have.  And  because 
of  its  intensity  and  unreasonableness,  the  longer 
period  must  elapse  ere  its  frenzy  dies  out  and 
cool,  calm  thought  comes  in. 

HERBERT. 

P.S.  —  My  book  is  out  —  "The  Economic 
Man."  I  send  it  to  you.  I  cannot  imagine 
you  will  care  for  the  thing. 


XXI 
FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 

May  26,  19 — . 

"*T~"VRETTY  nineteen-year-old  Louisa  Nav- 

1— *  eret,  because  her   slower-minded   fian- 

JL       cee,    Charles    J.    Johnson,    could    not 

understand  a  joke,  is  dying  with  a  bullet  in  her 

brain,  and  he,  her  murderer,  lies  dead  at  the 

morgue.       They   were   to   have   been   married 

to-day." 

From  to-day's  paper  I  quote  the  above  intro 
duction  to  a  column  murder-sensation  in  simple 
life.  Simple  it  was,  and  elemental  —  the  man 
loving  steadily  and  doggedly  and  madly,  after 
the  manner  of  the  male  before  possession ;  the 
woman  fluttering,  and  teasing,  and  tantalizing, 
after  the  manner  of  the  female  courting  posses 
sion.  They  had  been  engaged  for  some  time. 
The  woman  loved  the  man  and  fully  intended  to 


KEMPTON-WACE    LETTERS 

marry  him.  The  engagement  neared  its  close, 
and  on  the  day  before  that  of  the  wedding,  the 
man,  slow  minded,  loving  intensely,  procured 
the  marriage  license.  The  woman  read  the 
document,  and  with  the  last  coy  flutter  before 
surrender  told  him  that  she  would  not  marry 
him. 

"  I  meant  it  as  a  jest,"  she  said  as  she  lay  on 
a  cot  at  the  receiving  hospital ;  but  four  bullets 
were  in  her  body,  and  Charles  J.  Johnson, 
clumsy  and  natural  lover,  lay  dead  in  an  adjoin 
ing  room  with  the  fifth  bullet  in  his  brain. 

In  this  pitiful  little  tragedy  appear  two  of  the 
most  salient  characteristics  of  love;  namely, 
madness  and  selfishness.  Let  us  analyze 
Charles  J.  Johnson's  condition.  He  was  a  line 
man  for  a  telegraph  company,  healthy  and 
strong,  used  to  open-air  life  and  hard  work. 
He  had  steady  employment  and  good  wages. 
Can't  you  see  the  man,  content  with  a  good 
digestion,  unailing  body,  and  mild  pleasures, 
and  enjoying  life  with  bovine  placidity  ?  But 
pretty  Louisa  Naveret  entered  his  life.  The 
"  abysmal  fecundity  "  was  stirred  and  life  clam 
oured  to  be  created.  Peacefulness  and  content 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

vanished.  All  the  forces  of  his  existence  im 
pelled  him  to  seize  upon  and  possess  "  nineteen- 
year-old  "  Louisa  Naveret.  He  was  afflicted  with 
a  disorder  of  mind  and  body,  a  madness  so  great, 
a  delusion  so  powerful,  a  pain  and  unrest  so 
pressing,  that  the  possession  of  that  particular 
"nineteen-year-old"  woman  became  the  dearest 
thing  in  the  world,  dearer  than  life  itself  and 
more  potent  than  the  "will  to  live." 

I  do  well  to  call  love  a  madness.  Any  de 
parture  from  rationality  is  madness,  and  for  a 
man  of  Charles  J.  Johnson's  calibre,  suicide  is 
an  extremely  irrational  act.  But  he  also  killed 
Louisa  Naveret,  wherein  he  was  as  selfish  as  he 
was  mad.  Convinced  that  he  was  not  to  possess 
her,  he  was  determined  that  no  other  man  should 
possess  her. 

While  on  this  matter  of  love  considered  as 
a  disorder  of  mind  and  body,  I  recall  a  recent 
magazine  article  of  Mr.  Finck's,  in  which  he 
analyzes  Sappho's  conception  of  love.  "  In 
that  famous  poem  of  Sappho,"  he  says,  "  that 
has  been  so  often  declared  a  compendium  of  all 
the  emotions  that  make  up  love,  I  have  not 
been  able  to  find  anything  but  a  comic  catalogue 

[151] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

of  such  feelings  as  might  overwhelm  a  woman 
if  she  met  a  bear  in  the  woods  —  '  deadly  pallor,' 
'  a  cold  sweat,'  *  a  fluttering  heart,'  '  tongue  para 
lyzed,'  '  trembling  all  over,'  *  a  fainting  fit."1 

Dante  suffered  similarly  from  the  disorder  of 
love,  if  you  will  recollect.  In  this  connection 
may  be  cited  the  following  passage  from 
Diderot's  "  Paradox  of  Acting  "  :  — 

"  Take  two  lovers,  both  of  whom  have  their 
declarations  to  make.  Who  will  come  out  of  it 
best  ?  Not  I,  I  promise  you.  I  remember  that 
I  approached  the  beloved  object  with  fear  and 
trembling;  my  heart  beat,  my  ideas  grew  con 
fused,  my  voice  failed  me,  I  mangled  all  I  said  ; 
I  cried  yes  for  no :  I  made  a  thousand  blunders  ; 
I  was  inimitably  inept ;  I  was  absurd  from  top 
to  toe,  and  the  more  I  saw  it  the  more  absurd  I 
became.  Meanwhile,  under  my  very  eyes,  a  gay 
rival,  light  hearted  and  agreeable,  master  of  him 
self,  pleased  with  himself,  losing  no  opportunity 
for  the  finest  flattery,  made  himself  entertaining 
and  agreeable,  enjoyed  himself ;  he  implored  the 
touch  of  a  hand  which  was  at  once  given  him, 
he  sometimes  caught  it  without  asking  leave,  he 
kissed  it  once  and  again.  I,  the  while,  alone  in 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

a  corner,  avoided  a  sight  which  irritated  me ; 
stifling  my  sighs,  cracking  my  fingers  with 
grasping  my  wrists,  plunged  in  melancholy, 
covered  with  a  cold  sweat,  I  could  neither  show 
nor  conceal  my  vexation." 

Oh,  the  clamour  of  life  to  be  born  is  a  master 
ful  thing,  and  so  far  as  the  individual  is  con 
cerned,  a  most  irrational  thing;  and  so  far  as 
the  world  of  beasts  and  emotional  men  and 
women  is  concerned,  it  is  a  most  necessary 
thing.  That  life  may  live  and  continue  to  live, 
a  driving  force  is  needed  that  is  greater  than  the 
puny  will  of  life.  And  in  the  disorder  produced 
by  the  passion  for  perpetuation,  whether  or  not 
assisted  by  imagination,  is  found  this  driving 
force.  As  Ernst  Haeckel,  that  brave  old  hero 
of  Jena,  explains  : — 

"The  irresistible  passion  that  draws  Edward 
to  the  sympathetic  Otillia,  or  Paris  to  Helen, 
and  leaps  all  bounds  of  reason  and  morality,  is 
the  same  powerful,  unconscious,  attractive  force 
which  impels  the  living  spermatozoon  to  force 
an  entrance  into  the  ovum  in  the  fertilization  of 
the  egg  of  the  animal  or  plant  —  the  same  im 
petuous  movement  which  unites  two  atoms  of 

[i53] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

hydrogen  to  one  atom  of  oxygen  for  the  forma 
tion  of  a  molecule  of  water." 

But  with  the  advent  of  intellectual  man,  there 
is  no  longer  need  for  obeying  blind  and  irresis 
tible  compulsion.  Intellectual  man,  changing 
the  face  of  life  with  his  inventions  and  artifices, 
performing  telic  actions,  adjusting  himself  and 
his  concerns  to  remote  ends  and  ultimate  com 
pensations,  will  grapple  with  the  problem  of 
perpetuation  as  he  has  grappled  with  that  of 
gravitation.  As  he  controls  and  directs  the 
great  natural  forces  so  that,  instead  of  menac 
ing,  they  are  made  to  labour  for  his  safety 
and  comfort,  so  will  he  control  and  direct  the 
operation  of  the  reproductive  force  so  that  life 
will  not  only  be  perpetuated  but  developed  and 
made  higher  and  finer.  This  is  no  more  impos 
sible  than  is  the  steam-engine  impossible  or 
democracy  impossible. 

HERBERT. 


XXII 

FROM   DANE    KEMPTON   TO    HERBERT   WAGE 

LONDON, 

3  A  QUEEN'S  ROAD,  CHELSEA,  S.W., 
June  12,  19 — . 

PLEASE  remember  that  these  letters  are 
written  to  you  alone.  I  do  not  think 
that  there  is  less  love  in  the  world  than 
ever  before.  I  make  you  representative  of  a 
class,  which,  in  turn,  is  characteristic  of  the 
modern  scientific  type,  but  I  do  not  make  you 
representative  of  all  that  to-day's  world  has 
lived  up  to  and  lived  down.  So  I  do  not  join 
my  Ruskin  in  lamenting  the  past. .  To  be  sure, 
you  are  contemporary  and  you  are  parvenu. 
What  then  ?  You  are  few,  nevertheless,  and 
like  the  parvenu  rich,  you  must  pass  into  some 
thing  quite  unlike  yourself.  It  is  the  law  of 
growth.  I  ask  you  to  account  for  yourself  as 
an  individual.  The  thing  is  fiercely  personal. 
But  you  choose  the  roundabout  method  of  an- 

[iS5] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

swering  me.  For  a  view  of  what  in  your  eyes 
is  pertinent  to  this  matter,  you  stretch  a  canvas 
wide  as  the  world.  You  are  resolved  that  your 
course  should  dramatize  the  whole  play  and 
interplay  of  force  and  matter.  It  is  ideally  am 
bitious  of  you  and  I  am  glad.  It  puts  you  in 
the  ranks  with  the  students  of  the  ideal  tenden 
cies.  It  shows  that  you  are  not  always  impatient 
for  short  cuts,  and  that  you  begin  to  be  of  those 
who  harness  "horses  of  the  sun  to  plough  in 
earth's  rough  furrow." 

Your  letter  sounds  conclusive.  Romance  is 
waste,  love  is  unreasoning;  compatibility  alone 
is  worth  while.  You  think  this,  and  are  ready 
to  encrust  yourself  with  what  is  conventional 
and  practical.  Ah,  no,  it  is  not  even  decently 
conventional!  The  formal  world  pretends,  at 
least,  to  love.  It  also  reaches  for  the  fires  that 
thrill  and  thaw,  whereas  you  stand  before  a 
cold  hearth  and  think  the  chill  well  and  wel 
come,  since  you  understand  its  cause.  You 
have  grasped  part  of  a  truth,  and  though  my 
mind  complete  your  arc  into  the  perfection  of  a 
circle,  I  cannot  place  it  about  your  head  as  a 
halo.  My  confusion  comes  from  thinking  of 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

you  more  than  of  my  creed.  A  pregnant  factor 
in  our  debate  is  the  debater.  The  Hafiz  of  the 
Hafiz  maxims,  the  philosopher  of  your  philoso 
phy,  happens  to  interest  me.  You  have  been 
building  yourself  up  before  my  eyes,  and  for 
watching  I  cannot  speak. 

With  what  does  romance  interfere  ?  If  it 
implied  a  waste  of  vital  force,  a  giving  up,  a 
postponement  of  life,  it  were  a  roundabout  path 
to  development  and  happiness.  But  we  live 
most  when  we  are  most  under  its  sway,  and  it 
is  for  such  self-promised  sparks  that  we  live  at 
all.  Romance  quickens  and  controls  as  does 
nothing  else,  and  because  of  this  it  is  not  only 
a  means  but  an  end  in  itself.  It  is  stirred-up 
life.  We  live  most  when  we  love  most.  The 
love  of  romance  and  the  romance  of  love  is  the 
only  coin  for  which  the  heart-hurt  sell  their 
death.  A  trick?  Perhaps.  The  love  of  life 
is  a  trick  to  save  the  races  from  self-murder. 
Nature  makes  legitimate  her  tricks.  Let  the 
Genius  of  the  Race  lure  us  with  passion  and 
dreaming !  We  are  not  the  losers  by  it.  And 
if  the  dream  fades  and  we  grow  gray  despite 
what  has  been  lived,  then  is  it  something  to  re- 

[i57] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

member  that  soul  and  sense  have  leapt  and 
pulsed.  I  am  thankful  that  romance  has  an 
aftermath,  and  that  old  men  and  women  can 
prattle  about  days  that  were  robust.  I  am 
thankful  that  the  soldiers  of  life  are  at  the  end 
given  a  furlough  in  which  to  fondle  the  arms 
they  wielded  with  clumsiness  and  with  spirit, 
and  in  which  to  pass  themselves  in  review  be 
fore  their  pension  expires  and  their  day  is  over. 
Youth  has  the  romance  of  loving,  and  age  the 
romance  of  remembering. 

Lovers  are  not  always  compatible,  you  say, 
and,  before  all,  you  insist  upon  good  partnership. 
How  will  you  insure  yourself  against  unfitness  ? 
Surely  not  by  a  registering  and  weighing  of 
qualities,  not  by  bargaining  and  speculating. 
We  do  not  choose  our  wives  as  we  do  our 
saddle-horses ;  we  do  not  plan  our  marriages  as 
we  plan  our  houses.  It  may  sound  paradoxical, 
but  there  is  a  higher  compatibility  than  that  of 
quality  and  degree.  It  is  not  whether  people 
can  live  together,  but  whether  they  should  live 
together.  "It  is  an  awkward  thing  to  play 
with  souls,"  — you  override  the  fastidiousness  of 
the  soul  in  marrying  your  companion.  Unless 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

you  are  an  automaton,  you  cannot  rest  happy  in 
the  fact  that  you  and  she  do  not  disagree.  For 
comfort's  sake  you  would  have  a  negative  di 
mension  to  your  cosmos,  forgetting  that  your 
longings  and  your  needs  and,  it  may  be,  your 
dreams,  are  positive.  If  sex-comradeship  and 
affection  were  not  as  accidental  and  as  de 
pendent  on  mood  as  love  itself,  your  position 
would  have  much  in  its  favour.  You  could  then 
arrange  for  compatibility  in  marriage. 

You  speak  of  the  methods  in  economics  that 
conserve  energy  and  capital,  such  as  the  employ 
of  the  machine-guiding  boy,  which  saves  the 
labour  power  of  a  hundred  men,  and  you  hold 
that  in  the  realm  of  personal  life  like  methods 
may  obtain  with  value  and  dignity.  I  can  see 
how  natural  it  has  become  for  you  to  take  this 
viewpoint.  One  can  be  a  zealot  in  matters 
frigid.  The  law  behind  the  fact  has  you  in 
its  coil,  and  your  passion  goes  to  ice.  You 
burn  for  that  cold  thing,  compatibility.  You, 
too,  are  in  the  market-place  bound  to  a  stake  — 
it  is  not  for  such  as  you  to  escape  the  fire.  If 
you  look  to  compatibility  and  want  it  intensely, 
as  others  want  love,  then  you  suffer,  and  from 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

your  standpoint  (not  mine)  you  raise  a  vain  cry ; 
for  compatibility,  like  everything  else,  is  illusory. 
The  illusions  of  love  are  a  strength,  and  the  ways 
of  love  are  divine ;  through  them  we  come  to  that 
feeling  of  completion  which  is  compatibility  and 
which  is  as  ineffable  as  the  white-lipped  promise 
of  waves  heard  by  those  who  have  also  listened 
to  weeping. 

Love  is  not  responsible  for  institutionalism. 
There  would  be  no  fewer  marriages  if  people 
married  for  convenience,  nor  would  the  law 
make  such  unions  less  binding.  It  is  not  the 
fault  of  love  that  the  great  social  paradox  exists. 
In  the  precipitancy  of  feeling,  you  say,  the  lover 
fastens  upon  an  unsuitable  mate,  and,  with  pos 
session,  love  dies.  Here  I  attack  your  facts.  If 
an  awakening  cqmes,  it  is  not  for  either  of  these 
reasons.  Love  is  not  essentially  rational,  but 
then  it  is  love.  There  is  some  consistency  in 
affairs  natural,  and  the  esoteric  draught  that  en 
chanted  at  one  time  cannot  poison  at  another. 
Love  is  not  essentially  rational,  and  it  will  not 
of  a  sudden  become  so  at  the  possession  of  the 
loved  one.  People  who  marry  from  convenience 
may  wake  to  find  their  union  most  inconvenient. 
[160] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

"  There  are  more  things  in  heaven  and  earth," 
and  there  are  more  intricacies  of  feeling  and  more 
sloughs  and  depths,  than  are  dreamed  of  in  your 
philosophy.  A  definite  understanding  as  to  sofa 
cushions  and  tobacco  smoke  does  not  always  in 
sure  unwearied  forbearance  and  devotion.  With 
love,  on  the  other  hand,  disappointment  is  very 
much  less  likely  to  spring  up,  for  the  reason  that 
it  is  free  from  calculation.  Love  is  a  sympathy. 
It  takes  hold,  it  grows  upon  the  soul  and  the 
senses,  and  it  does  not  flee  before  argument  and 
explanation. 

Still  less  can  I  admit  that  possession  kills  love. 
Do  we  give  up  living  because  the  world  is  based 
on  Will  and  Idea  ?  Yet  to  will  is  to  want,  Scho 
penhauer  tells  us,  and  to  want  is  to  be  in  pain. 
Do  we  know  ourselves  in  pain  every  minute  of 
our  lives?  Hardly.  This  applies.  You  hold  that, 
with  the  fulfilled  hope  and  the  appeased  hunger, 
indifference  takes  the  place  of  desire.  It  reads 
so  in  logic,  but  not  in  life.  If  what  is  in  our 
possession  be  good,  we  prize  it  more  highly  for 
its  being  within  reach.  The  good  in  our  keeping 
does  not  sate;  it  pains  with  divine  hungers. 
We  do  not  tire  of  what  we  have ;  we  rise  to  it. 
M  [161] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

We  do  not  know  the  sweetness  of  being  stead 
fast  until  we  are  so  impelled  by  the  love  with 
which  we  have  grown  great.  The  lover  may 
well  say :  "  She  was  not  my  ideal ;  before  I 
knew  her  I  was  not  great  enough  to  think  her. 
She  taught  me." 

Besides,  an  acquaintance  with  your  wife's 
faults  does  not  kill  your  love.  You  cannot  turn 
from  your  brother  or  your  friend  if  he  commit 
even  a  lurid  act;  you  cannot  turn  from  a  stranger; 
much  less  can  you  turn  from  your  beloved. 
Herbert,  when  men  set  themselves  to  judge, 
they  are  invariably  ridiculous  and  an  offence  to 
high  heaven.  Believe  me,  it  is  artificial.  The 
true  judge  cares  not  for  the  fact  of  the  deed, 
but  for  its  motive.  And  the  lover  knows  the 
motive.  He  has  the  key  to  the  life.  He  knows 
his  beloved,  not  as  she  is,  but  "  as  she  was  born  to 
be."  His  lips  press  and  his  arms  enfold  not  her 
so  much  as  the  ideal  of  her,  and  unless  she  un 
make  herself,  he  cannot  unlove  her.  "  To  judge 
a  man  by  the  fruit  of  his  actions,"  says  Professor 
Edward  Howard  Griggs,  "  it  is  necessary  to  know 
all  of  the  fruit,  which  is  impossible.  You  can 
only  know  what  he  eternally  must  be  if  you  catch 

[,62] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

the  aspect  of  his  soul  and  grow  to  understand  his 
aspirations  and  his  loves."  To  idealize,  there 
fore,  is  not  to  be  blind,  but  to  be  far-seeing. 

There  is  another  way  of  looking  on  this  ques 
tion  of  the  paradox.  Granted  that  it  is  caused 
by  romantic  love,  romantic  love  is  still  exclu 
sively  the  best  thing  in  the  world.  You  cannot 
pay  too  dearly  for  the  good  of  life.  I  know 
that  the  misery  of  being  in  the  intimacy  of  wed 
lock  with  one  who  is  not  loved  is  unutterable. 
It  is  to  become  degraded  and  unrecognizable,  it 
is  to  wear  the  brand  of  liar  before  God !  The 
man  whose  outer  life  belies  the  inner  is  an  en 
forced  suicide.  There  is  something  of  majesty 
in  "  laying  one's  self  down  with  a  will,"  and  there 
is  something  of  strength  in  cloistering  the  body 
for  the  spirit's  health's  sake,  but  to  die  when  all 
within  is  warm  and  clamorous  for  life  is  terrible. 
Such  a  death  they  die  who  are  held  together, 
not  by  the  bonds  of  the  spirit,  but  by  those  of 
convention.  They  who  would  go  from  each 
other  and  dare  not,  die  the  ignominious  death 
of  fear.  The  suicide  is  contemptible,  besides 
being  pitiable,  when  he  is  hounded  out  of  life 
despite  himself,  when  he  is  a  little  embezzler 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

of  a  clerk  who  rushes  from  the  music  hall  to 
the  Thames  and  thinks  of  the  unfinished  glass 
with  his  last  breath.  No,  I  do  not  under 
estimate  the  tragedy  of  the  paradox.  Yet  I  say 
that  if  love  were  accountable  for  it  (which  it  is 
not),  it  would  still  be  folly  to  forswear  love.  Do 
you  ask  why  ?  Because  its  dangers  are  the  dan 
gers  common  to  all  life,  and  we  are  so  made  that 
we  cannot  be  frightened  away  from  our  portion 
of  experience.  We  are  as  loath  to  give  up  our 
nights  as  our  days.  The  winters  as  the  sum 
mers,  all  the  seasons  and  all  the  climes,  the 
fears  as  the  hopes,  all  the  travail  of  deepest, 
fullest  living,  we  claim  as  our  own  forever.  We 
guard  jealously  our  heritage  of  feeling.  Would 
you  for  all  the  world  sleep  rather  than  wake, 
forget  rather  than  remember  ?  Then  cease  the 
requiem  of  your  speech  about  the  dangers  of 
disillusion ! 

Madness  and  selfishness  were  the  cause  of 
Louisa  Naveret's  death,  and  the  man  who  was 
mad  and  selfish  was  her  lover.  The  poor  man 
had  not  the  strength  to  renounce  when  he 
thought  he  found  himself  face  to  face  with 
the  necessity  of  renouncing.  But  all  lovers 
[164] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

are  not  too  weak  to  cope  with  love.  John 
Ruskin,  if  you  remember,  loved  his  wife,  and 
he  shot  neither  himself,  nor  her,  nor  Millais. 
Charles  J.  Johnson  is  not  a  Ruskin,  and  Rus- 
kin's  love  was  not  a  madness. 

And,  Herbert,  to  me  there  is  nothing  comic 
in  a  stress  of  feeling.  Let  the  lover  pale  and 
flutter  and  faint ;  in  the  presence  of  his  deity  it 
is  an  acceptable  form  of  worship.  The  very 
self-possessed  lover  is  more  preposterous ! 

Your  book  has  not  yet  reached  me.     To-mor 
row  I  shall  write  again,  providing  I  remember 
how  to  write  a  natural  letter. 
Yours, 

DANE  KEMPTON. 


XXIII 

FROM  THE   SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

LONDON, 
June  20,  19 — . 

THERE  are  impersonal  hours  when  the 
things  of  the  day  drop  below  con 
sciousness  and  the  spirit  grows  devo 
tional  and  wends  a  pilgrimage  to  larger  spheres, 
there  to  sit  apart.  Such  a  respite  was  mine  to 
day.  There  had  been  a  call  to  rouse  and  put 
forth  work,  and  I  wrought  with  all  the  puniness 
of  my  might  (woe  is  me  !) ,  and  earned  my  post 
at  the  window  that  looks  out  upon  the  large 
things.  The  best  of  nights  and  days  of  toil  is 
that  there  comes  a  twilight  in  which  fatigued 
eyes  see  clear.  I  said  it  did  not  matter  how  you 
do  about  your  marriage.  Time  may  right  you 
in  a  way  I  cannot  know.  I  said  it  did  not  mat 
ter  if  you  are  not  righted  in  this,  there  being  so 
[166] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

much  that  never  rights  itself.  Both  hope  and 
despair  were  followed  by  a  calm  of  neutrality. 
The  inquiry  waited  no  solution.  The  stress  no 
longer  touched  me,  and  my  twilight  became  lu 
minous.  I  saw  things  as  from  a  height  and 
forms  dropped  out  of  my  range,  when  Barbara 
came  tugging  at  me,  and  my  pale  while  of  ab 
straction  was  at  an  end. 

She  wanted  to  know  what  troubled  me.  She 
made  her  way  to  me,  hurried  but  resolved,  and 
stated  her  demand.  "You  catechised  me  yes 
terday ;  to-night  you  shall  answer." 

She  had  come  to  defend  herself.  My  talk  hav 
ing  of  late  taken  on  the  sameness  of  that  of  the 
man  of  one  idea,  Barbara  was  aroused.  I  was 
gauging  her  because  she  distressed  me,  was  her 
thought.  (I  had  been  trying  to  find  whether  it 
is  possible  to  live  differently  from  her  and  live 
happily  and  well.)  "You  think  I  am  not  close 
enough  to  Earl,  because  I  mourn  for  my  little  one, 
perhaps.  You  think  me  not  sufficiently  happy 
to  be  wifely."  Could  I  suppose  aught  else 
from  such  an  utterance  but  that  there  was  an 
estrangement  and  hidden  pain  ?  How,  unless 
there  were  sorrow,  could  the  woman  see  herself 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

sorrowed  for  ?  My  mind  leapt  to  possibilities. 
Little  Barbara  on  the  rack  was  more  than  I 
could  bear.  I  groped  for  her  hands.  It  was  a 
fault  in  her  to  be  so  much  on  her  guard.  She 
had  no  sorrow  to  confess,  and  spoke  —  only  to 
ward  off  what  was  not  directed  toward  her. 

"  The  tenor  of  your  talk  led  me  on  to  believe 
— "  she  stammered  with  hot  cheeks.  It  is  a 
standing  offence  of  hers  to  imagine  herself  ac 
cused,  and  she  admits  it  is  a  weakness  born  of 
lack  of  poise.  "But  I  took  all  for  granted,  I 
thought  you  fortunate  beyond  any  other  woman," 
I  protested.  At  this  the  radiance  broke  forth. 
I  forgave  the  chill  that  her  first  words  on  enter 
ing  the  room  struck  to  my  heart,  and  she  forgot 
what  she  had  imagined. 

There  is  nothing  more  important  than  the 
play  and  interplay  of  feeling.  Were  Barbara 
"  unwifely,"  I  could  not  blame  her,  but  neither 
could  I  have  at  hand  my  proof  of  dear  miracles. 
My  proof  remained  to  me,  for  there  she  stood,  her 
face  lifted  toward  mine,  her  mouth  tremulous, 
her  gray  eyes  swimming.  The  mate  woman  was 
stirred.  Barbara  is  twenty-six  and  has  been 
married  seven  years,  and  she  still  vibrates  with 
[168] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

the  old  wonder  to  find  herself   loving  and  be 
loved. 

I  meant  to  tell  you  of  what  we  spoke  later,  in 
the  hope  that  I  could  show  you  a  little  better 
what  I  hold  dear  and  why.  But  my  hand  grows 
nerveless.  The  twilight  of  abstraction  has  set 
in.  A  little  while  ago  this  hand  was  quick  to 
rest  on  Barbara's  as  I  called  her  my  heroine. 
She  is  that,  not  alone  because  she  is  pure  and 
good  and  strong,  but  because  she  can  accept 
the  test  of  her  instincts.  It  takes  both  faith 
and  strength  to  obey  oneself.  "  When  shows 
break  up,  what  but  one's  Self  remains  ? "  asks 
Whitman.  The  shows  are  but  shows  for 
Barbara.  Will  I  look  into  your  eyes  on  the 
morrow  and  find  them,  like  hers,  clear  ?  Grant 
that  it  be ! 

DANE. 


[169] 


XXIV 
FROM  HERBERT  WAGE    TO   DANE    KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 
July  i,  19—. 

SOMEWHERE  in  Ward  you  may  read, 
"It  must  constantly  be  borne  in  mind 
that  all  progress  consists  in  the  arbitrary 
alteration,  by  human  efforts  and  devices,  of  the 
normal  course  of  nature,  so  that  civilization  is 
wholly  an  artificial  product."  Why,  Dane,  this 
is  large  enough  to  base  a  sociology  upon.  And 
I  must  ask  you  first,  is  it  true  ?  Second,  do  you 
understand,  do  you  appreciate,  the  tremendous 
significance  of  it  ?  And  third,  how  can  you 
bring  your  philosophy  of  love  in  accord  with  it  ? 
Romantic  love  is  certainly  not  natural.  It  is 
an  artifice,  blunderingly  and  unwittingly  intro 
duced  by  man  into  the  natural  order.  Is  this 
audacious  ?  Let  us  see.  In  a  state  of  nature 
the  love  which  obtains  is  merely  the  passion  for 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

perpetuation  devoid  of  all  imagination.  The  male 
possesses  the  prehensile  organs  and  the  supe 
rior  strength.  Beyond  the  ardour  of  pursuit  the 
female  has  no  charms  for  him.  But  he  is  driven 
irresistibly  to  pursuit.  And  by  virtue  of  his 
prehensile  organs  and  superior  strength  he  rav 
ishes  the  females  of  his  species  and  goes  his 
way.  But  life  creeps  slowly  upward,  increasing 
in  complexity  and  necessarily  in  intelligence. 
When  some  forgotten  inventor  of  the  older 
world  smote  his  rival  or  enemy  with  a  branch 
of  wood  and  found  that  it  was  good  and  there 
after  made  a  practice  of  smiting  rivals  and 
enemies  with  branches  of  wood,  then,  and  on 
that  day,  artificiality  may  be  said  to  have  begun. 
Then,  and  on  that  day,  was  begun  a  revolution 
destined  to  change  the  history  of  life.  Then, 
and  on  that  day,  was  laid  the  cornerstone  of  that 
most  tremendous  of  artifices,  CIVILIZATION  ! 
Trace  it  up.  Our  ape-like  and  arboreal  ances 
tors  entered  upon  the  first  of  many  short  cuts. 
To  crack  a  marrow-bone  with  a  rock  was  the  act 
which  fathered  the  tool,  and  between  the  crack 
ing  of  a  marrow-bone  and  the  riding  down  town 
in  an  automobile  lies  only  a  difference  of  degree. 

[171] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

The  one  is  crudely  artificial,  the  other  consum 
mately  artificial.  That  is  all.  There  have  been 
improvements.  The  first  inventors  grasped 
that  truthful  paradox,  "the  longest  way  round 
is  the  shortest  way  home,"  and  forsook  the  direct 
pursuit  of  happiness  for  the  indirect  pursuit  of 
happiness.  If  the  happiness  of  a  savage  depended 
upon  his  crossing  an  extensive  body  of  water,  he 
did  not  directly  proceed  to  swim  it,  but  turned 
his  back  upon  it,  selected  a  tree  from  the  forest, 
shaped  it  with  his  rude  tools  and  hollowed  it 
out  with  fire,  then  launched  it  in  the  water  and 
paddled  toward  where  his  happiness  lay. 

Now  concerning  love.  In  the  state  of  nature 
it  is  a  brutal  passion,  nothing  more.  There  is  no 
romance  attached.  But  life  creeps  upward,  and 
the  gregarious  human  forms  social  groups  the 
like  of  which  never  existed  before.  Consider 
the  family  group,  for  instance.  Such  a  group 
becomes  in  itself  an  entity.  By  means  of  the 
group  man  is  better  enabled  to  pursue  happi 
ness.  But  to  maintain  the  group  it  must  be 
regulated;  so  man  formulates  rules,  codes,  dim 
ethical  laws  for  the  conduct  of  the  group  mem 
bers.  Sexual  ties  are  made  less  promiscuous 


FROM   WAGE   TO    KEMPTON 

and  more  orderly.  A  greater  privacy  is  ob 
served.  And  out  of  order  and  privacy  spring 
respect  and  sacredness. 

But  life  creeps  upward,  and  the  family  group 
itself  becomes  but  a  unit  of  greater  and  greater 
groups.  And  rules  and  codes  change  in  accord 
ance,  until  the  marriage  tie  becomes  possessed 
of  a  history  and  takes  to  itself  traditions.  This 
history  and  these  traditions  form  a  great  fund, 
to  which  changing  conditions  and  growing  im 
agination  constantly  add.  And  the  traditions, 
more  especially,  bear  heavily  upon  the  individ 
ual,  overmastering  his  natural  expression  of  the 
love  instinct  and  forcing  him  to  an  artificial 
expression  of  that  love  instinct.  He  loves,  not 
as  his  savage  forbears  loved,  but  as  his  group 
loves.  And  the  love  method  of  his  group  is 
determined  by  its  love  traditions.  Does  the 
individual  compare  his  beloved's  eyes  to  the 
stars  —  it  is  a  trick  of  old  time  which  has  come 
down  to  him.  Does  he  serenade  under  her 
window  or  compose  an  ode  to  her  beauty  or 
virtue  — his  father  did  it  before  him.  In  his 
lover's  voice  throb  the  voices  of  myriads  of 
lovers  all  dead  and  dust.  The  singers  of  a 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

thousand  songs  are  the  ghostly  chorus  to  the 
song  of  love  he  sings.  His  ideas,  his  very  feel 
ings  are  not  his,  but  the  ideas  and  feelings 
of  countless  lovers  who  lived  and  loved  and 
whose  lives  and  loves  are  remembered.  Their 
mistaken  facts  and  foolish  precepts  are  his,  and 
likewise  their  imaginative  absurdities  and  senti 
mental  philanderings.  Without  an  erotic  litera 
ture,  a  history  of  great  loves  and  lovers,  a  garland 
of  love  songs  and  ballads,  a  sheaf  of  spoken  love 
tales  and  adventures  —  without  all  this,  which 
is  the  property  of  his  group,  he  could  not  pos 
sibly  love  in  the  way  he  does. 

To  illustrate :  Isolate  a  boy  babe  and  a  girl 
babe  of  cultured  breed  upon  a  desert  isle.  Let 
them  feed  and  grow  strong  on  shell-fish  and 
fruit ;  but  let  them  see  none  other  of  their 
species,  hear  no  speech  of  mouth,  nor  acquire 
knowledge  in  any  way  of  their  kind  and  the 
things  their  kind  has  done.  Well,  what  then  ? 
They  will  grow  to  man  and  woman  and  mate  as 
the  beasts  mate,  without  romance  and  without 
imagination.  Does  the  woman  oppose  her  will 
to  that  of  the  man  —  he  will  beat  her.  Does 
he  become  overviolent  in  the  manifestation  of 

[174] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

his  regard,  she  will  flee  away,  if  she  can,  to 
secret  hiding-places.  He  will  not  compare  her 
eyes  to  the  stars ;  nor  will  she  dream  that  he  is 
Apollo ;  nor  will  the  pair  moon  in  the  twilight 
over  the  love  of  Hero  and  Leander.  And  the 
many  monogamic  generations  out  of  which  he 
has  descended  would  fail  to  prevent  polygamy 
did  another  woman  chance  to  strand  on  that 
particular  isle. 

It  is  the  common  practice  of  the  man  of  the 
London  slum  to  kick  his  wife  to  death  when  she 
has  offended  him.  And  the  man  of  the  London 
slum  is  a  very  natural  beast  who  expresses  him 
self  in  a  very  natural  manner.  He  has  never 
heard  of  Hero  and  Leander,  and  the  comparison 
of  the  missus'  eyes  to  the  stars  would  to  him  be 
arrant  bosh.  The  gentle,  tender,  considerate 
male  is  an  artificial  product.  And  so  is  the 
romantic  lover,  who  is  fashioned  by  the  love 
traditions  which  come  down  to  him  and  by  the 
erotic  literature  to  which  he  has  access. 

And  now  to  the  point.  Romantic  love  being 
an  artificial  product,  you  cannot  base  its  reten 
tion  upon  the  claim  that  it  is  natural.  Your 
only  claim  can  be  that  it  is  the  best  possible  arti- 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

fice  for  the  perpetuation  of  life,  or  that  it  is  the 
only  perfect,  all-sufficient,  and  all-satisfying  arti 
fice  that  man  can  devise.  On  the  one  hand, 
for  the  perpetuation  of  life,  man  demonstrates 
the  inefficiency  of  romantic  love  by  his  achieve 
ments  in  the  domestic  selection  of  animals. 
And  on  the  other  hand,  the  very  irrationality  of 
romantic  love  will  tend  to  its  gradual  elimination 
as  the  human  grows  wiser  and  wiser.  Also,  be 
cause  it  is  such  a  crude  artifice,  it  forces  far  too 
many  to  contract  the  permanent  marriage  tie 
without  possessing  compatibility.  During  the 
time  romantic  love  runs  its  course  in  an  individ 
ual,  that  individual  is  in  a  diseased,  abnormal, 
irrational  condition.  Mental  or  spiritual  health, 
which  is  rationality,  makes  for  progress,  and  the 
future  demands  greater  and  greater  mental  or 
spiritual  health,  greater  and  greater  rationality. 
The  brain  must  dominate  and  direct  both  the 
individual  and  society  in  the  time  to  come,  not 
the  belly  and  the  heart.  Granted  that  the 
function  romantic  love  has  served  has  been 
necessary ;  that  is  no  reason  to  conclude  that 
it  must  always  be  necessary,  that  it  is  eternally 
necessary.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  rudimen- 


FROM   WAGE   TO    KEMPTON 

tary  organs  which  served  functions  long  since 
fallen  into  disuse  and  now  unremembered. 

The  world  has  changed,  Dane.  Sense  de 
lights  are  no  longer  the  sole  end  of  existence. 
The  brain  is  triumphing  over  the  belly  and  the 
heart.  The  intellectual  joy  of  living  is  finer 
and  higher  than  the  mere  sensual  joy  of  living. 
Darwin,  at  the  conclusion  of  his  "  Origin  of 
Species,"  experienced  a  nobler  and  more  exqui 
site  pleasure  than  did  ever  Solomon  with  his 
thousand  concubines  and  wives.  And  while 
our  sense  delights  themselves  have  become  re 
fined,  their  very  refinement  has  been  due  to  the 
increasing  dominion  over  them  of  the  intellect. 
Our  canons  of  art  are  not  founded  on  the 
heart.  No  emotion  elaborated  the  laws  of  com 
position.  We  cannot  experience  a  sense  delight 
in  any  art  object  unless  it  satisfies  our  intellec 
tual  discrimination.  "He  is  a  natural  singer," 
we  say  of  the  poet  who  works  unscientifically ; 
"  but  he  is  lame,  his  numbers  halt,  and  he  has 
no  knowledge  of  technique." 

The  intellect,  not  the  heart,  made  man,  and  is 
continuing  to  make  him  —  ah,  slowly,  Dane,  for 
life  creeps  slowly  upward.  The  "  Advanced 

N  [177] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

Margin "  is  a  favourite  shibboleth  of  yours. 
And  I  take  it  that  the  Advanced  Margin  is  that 
portion  of  our  race  which  is  more  dominated  by 
intellect  than  the  race  proper.  And  I,  as  a 
member  of  that  group,  purpose  to  order  my 
affairs  in  a  rational  manner.  My  reason  tells  me 
that  the  mere  passion  of  begetting  and  the  pal 
try  romance  of  pursuit  are  not  the  greatest  and 
most  exquisite  delights  of  living.  Intellectual 
delight  is  my  bribe  for  living,  and  though  the 
bargain  be  a  hard  one,  I  shall  endeavour  to  exact 
the  last  shekel  which  is  my  due. 

Wherefore  I  marry  Hester  Stebbins.  I  am 
not  impelled  by  the  archaic  sex  madness  of  the 
beast,  nor  by  the  obsolescent  romance  madness 
of  latter-day  man.  I  contract  a  tie  which  my 
reason  tells  me  is  based  upon  health  and  sanity 
and  compatibility.  My  intellect  shall  delight  in 
that  tie.  My  life  shall  be  free  and  broad  and 
great,  and  I  will  not  be  the  slave  to  the  sense 
delights  which  chained  my  ancient  ancestry. 
I  reject  the  heritage.  I  break  the  entail.  And 
who  are  you  to  say  I  am  unwise  ? 

HERBERT  WAGE. 


XXV 

FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 
July  5,  19—. 

I  HAD  not  intended  to  answer  your  letter 
critically,  but,  on  rereading,  find  I  am 
forced  to  speak  if  for  no  other  reason  than 
your  epithet  "parvenu."  The  word  has  no  re 
proach.  It  was  ever  thus  that  the  old  and 
perishing  recognized  the  vigorous  and  new. 
Parvenu,  upstart  —  the  term  is  replete  with 
significance  and  health.  I  doubt  not  Elijah 
himself  was  dubbed  parvenu  when  he  fluttered 
with  his  golden  harp  into  that  bright-browed 
throng,  pride-swollen  for  that  they  had  fought 
with  Michael  when  Lucifer  was  hurled  into 
hell. 

"  We  do  not  choose  our  wives  as  we  buy  our 
saddle-horses  ;  we  do  not  plan  our  marriages  as 
we  do  the  building  of  our  houses,"  —  so  you  say, 

[179] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

and  it  is  said  excellently.  No  better  indictment 
of  romantic  love  do  I  ask.  And  oh,  how  many 
good  men  and  women  have  I  heard  bitterly 
arraign  society  in  that  in  the  begetting  of  chil 
dren  it  does  not  exercise  the  judgment  which  it 
exercises  in  breeding  its  horses  and  its  dogs ! 
Marriage  is  something  more  than  the  mere 
pulsating  to  romance,  the  thrilling  to  vague- 
sweet  strains,  the  singing  idly  in  empty  days, 
the  sating  of  self  with  pleasure  —  what  of  the 
children  ? 

"  Never  mind  the  children,"  says  selfish  little 
Love.  "  It  has  been  our  wont  never  to  give 
any  thought  to  the  children ;  they  were  inci 
dental.  Always  have  we  sought  our  own  pleas 
ure  ;  let  us  continue  to  seek  our  own  pleasure." 
So  society  continues  to  breed  its  horses  and 
dogs  with  judgment  and  forethought  and  to 
trust  to  luck  for  its  children. 

But  it  won't  do,  Dane.  Life,  in  a  sense,  is 
living  and  surviving.  And  all  that  makes  for 
living  and  surviving  is  good.  He  who  follows 
the  fact  cannot  go  astray,  while  he  who  has  no 
reverence  for  the  fact  wanders  afar.  Chivalry 
went  mad  over  an  idea.  It  idealized,  if  you 

[!80] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

please.  It  made  of  love  a  fine  art,  and  count 
less  knights-errant  devoted  themselves  to  the 
service  of  the  little  god.  It  sentimentalized 
over  ladies'  gloves  and  forgot  to  make  for  living 
and  surviving.  And  while  chivalry  committed 
suicide  over  its  ladies'  gloves,  the  stout,  wooden- 
headed  burghers,  with  an  eye  to  the  facts  of  life, 
dickered  and  bickered  in  trade.  And  on  the 
wreck  and  ruin  of  chivalry  they  flaunted  their 
parvenu  insolence.  God,  how  they  triumphed  ! 
The  children  of  cobblers  and  shop-keepers  buy 
ing  with  their  yellow  gold  the  "  thousand  years 
old  names  !  "  buying  with  their  yellow  gold  the 
proud  flesh  and  blood  of  their  lords  to  breed 
with  them  and  theirs !  patronizing  the  arts, 
speaking  a  kind  word  to  science,  and  patting 
God  on  the  back  !  But  they  triumphed,  that  is 
the  point.  They  reverenced  the  fact  and  made 
for  living  and  surviving. 

Love  is  life,  you  say,  and  you  seem  to  hold  it 
the  achievement  of  existence.  But  I  cannot  say 
that  life  is  love.  Life  ?  It  is  a  toy,  i'  faith, 
given  to  us,  we  know  not  why,  to  play  with  as 
we  chance  to  please.  Some  elect  to  dream, 
some  to  love,  and  some  to  fight.  Some  choose 
[181] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

immediate  happiness,  and  some  ultimate  happi 
ness.  One  stakes  the  Here  and  Now  upon  the 
Hereafter  ;  another  takes  the  Here  and  Now 
and  lets  the  Hereafter  go.  But  each  grasps  the 
toy  and  does  with  it  according  to  his  fancy. 
And  while  none  may  know  the  end  of  life,  all 
know  that  life  is  the  end  of  love.  Love,  poor 
little,  crude  little,  love,  is  the  means  to  life  — 
and  so  we  complete  the  circle.  Life  ?  It  is  a 
toy,  i'  faith,  given  us,  we  know  not  why,  to  play 
with  as  we  chance  to  please. 

But  this  we  know,  that  love  is  the  means  to 
life,  and  it  is  subject  to  inevitable  improvement. 
By  our  intellect  will  we  improve  upon  it.  Life 
abundant !  finer  life !  higher  life !  fuller  life  ! 
When  we  scientifically  breed  our  race-horses 
and  our  draught-horses,  we  make  for  life  abun 
dant.  And  when  we  come  scientifically  to  breed 
the  human,  we  shall  make  for  life  abundant,  for 
humanity  abundant. 

You  say  an  aquaintance  with  the  petty  vices 
of  one's  wife  does  not  kill  one's  love.  Oh  yes,  it 
does,  and  out  of  the  ashes  of  that  love  rises  affec 
tion,  comradeship,  in  kind  somewhat  similar  to 
the  affection  and  comradeship  which  I  have  for 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

my  brother.  I  do  not  love  my  brother,  and  it  is 
because  I  do  not  love  him,  and  because  I  do 
have  affection  and  comradeship  for  him,  that  I 
do  not  turn  away  when  he  commits  even  a  lurid 
act.  Love,  you  will  remember,  takes  its  rise  in 
the  emotions,  and  is  unstable  and  wanton  and 
capricious.  But  affection  takes  its  rise  in  the 
intellect,  is  based  upon  the  judgment  of  the 
brain.  Love  is  unyielding  tyranny  ;  affection  is 
compromise.  Love  never  compromises,  no  more 
than  does  the  mad  little  mating  sparrow  compro 
mise. 

My  brother  ?  —  I  played  with  him  as  a  boy. 
His  weaknesses  and  faults  incensed  and  hurt 
me,  as  mine  incensed  and  hurt  him.  Many  were 
our  quarrels.  But  he  had  also  good  qualities 
which  pleased  me,  and  at  times  performed  gra 
cious  acts  and  even  sacrifices.  And  I  likewise. 
And  with  my  brain  I  weighed  his  weaknesses 
and  faults  against  his  gracious  acts  and  sacri 
fices,  and  I  achieved  a  judgment  upon  him. 
The  ethics  of  the  family  group  also  contributed 
to  this  judgment.  The  duties  of  kinship  and 
the  responsibilities  of  blood  ties  were  impressed 
upon  me.  We  grew  up  at  our  mother's  knee, 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

and  she  and  our  father  became  factors  in  deter 
mining  what  my  conduct  should  be.  They,  too, 
taught  me  that  my  brother  was  my  brother,  and 
that  in  so  far  as  he  was  my  brother,  my  relations 
with  him  must  be  different  from  my  relations 
with  those  who  were  not  my  brothers.  And  all 
went  to  crystallize  an  intellectual  judgment,  or 
a  set  of  criteria,  as  it  were,  to  guide  all  sane, 
unemotional  acts  and  even  to  control  and  re 
press  many  emotional  acts.  These  criteria,  I 
say,  became  crystallized,  became  automatic  in 
my  thought  processes. 

And  now,  in  manhood,  my  brother  commits 
a  lurid  act,  an  act  repulsive  to  me,  one  capable 
of  arousing  emotions  of  anger,  of  bitterness,  of 
hatred.  I  experience  an  emotional  impulse  to 
pour  my  wrath  upon  him,  to  be  bitter  toward 
him,  to  hate  him.  Then  I  experience  an  intellec 
tual  impulse.  Whatever  way  I  may  act,  I  must 
first  settle  with  my  crystallized  criteria.  The  per 
sonal  bonds  of  my  boyhood  and  manhood  press 
upon  me  —  the  gracious  acts  and  sacrifices  and 
compromises,  our  father  and  our  mother,  the 
duties  of  kinship  and  the  responsibilities  of 
blood.  Thus  two  counter-impulses  strive  with 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

me.  I  desire  to  do  two  counter  things.  Heart 
and  head  the  fight  is  waged,  and  heart  or  head 
I  shall  act  according  to  which  is  the  stronger 
impulse.  And  if  my  affection  be  stronger,  I 
shall  not  turn  away,  but  clasp  my  brother  in  my 
arms. 

I  fear  I  have  not  made  myself  clear.  It  is 
difficult  to  write  hurriedly  of  things  psycholog 
ical,  when  the  extreme  demand  is  made  upon 
intellect  and  vocabulary ;  but  at  least  you  may 
roughly  catch  my  drift.  What  I  have  striven 
to  say  is,  that  I  forgive  my  brother,  not  because 
I  love  him,  but  because  of  the  affection  I  bear 
him ;  also  that  this  affection  is  the  product  of 
reason,  is  the  sum  of  the  judgments  I  have 
achieved. 

HERBERT. 


XXVI 

FROM  DANE   KEMPTON  TO   HERBERT  WAGE 

LONDON, 

3  A  QUEEN'S  ROAD,  CHELSEA,  S.W., 
July  21,  19—. 

PROGRESS  is  an  arbitrary  alteration,  by 
human  efforts  and  devices,  of  the  nor 
mal  course  of  nature,  so  that  civilization 
is  wholly  an  artificial  product."  You  ask  me  to 
consider  this  refracted  bit  of  sociology  and  by 
its  light  to  cast  out  my  exalted  notion  of  love. 
As  if  you  have  proven  that  love  is  incompatible 
with  civilization !  We  make  over  life  with  each 
successive  step,  but  we  do  not  give  over  living. 
In  developing  new  forms  and  in  establishing 
more  and  more  subtle  social  relations  we  are 
only  building  upon  what  we  find  ready  to  hand. 
The  paradox  of  creature  and  creator  does  not 
exist.  When  your  sociologist  speaks  of  arbitrary 
alterations,  he  has  reference  to  polities  and 
governments  and  criteria,  to  the  material  and 
[186] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

ideal  forces  which  a  progressive  society  may 
wield  for  itself.  He  cannot  include  under 
progress  an  alteration  of  those  needs  of  exist 
ence  which  make  up  the  quality  of  existence. 
Speak  of  a  community  which  equally  distributes 
the  products  of  labour  and  I  will  grant  that  there 
has  been  an  arbitrary  alteration,  the  normal 
course  of  nature  being  that  the  stronger,  openly, 
and  even  with  the  common  assent,  takes  to  the 
repletion  of  his  desire  from  the  weaker.  But 
speak  of  a  condition  so  progressive  that  it  sub 
verts  the  need,  so  that  where  in  the  one  case 
hunger  was  equitably  gratified,  in  the  other, 
hunger  was  done  away  with,  and  I  will  say  that 
you  are  giving  an  Arabian  Nights'  entertainment. 

Love  is  of  a  piece  with  life,  like  hunger,  like 
joy,  like  death.  Your  progress  cannot  leave  it 
behind  ;  your  civilization  must  become  the  ex 
ponent  of  it. 

Your  last  letter  is  formal  and  elaborate,  and  — 
equivocal.  In  it  you  remind  me,  menacingly,  of 
the  possibilities  of  progress,  you  posit  that  love 
is  at  best  artificial,  and  you  apotheosize  the  brain. 
As  an  emancipated  rationality,  you  say  you  cut 
yourself  loose  from  the  convention  of  feelingo 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

Progress  cannot  affect  the  need  and  the  power 
to  love.  This  I  have  already  stated.  "  How 
is  it  under  our  control  to  love  or  not  to  love?" 
Life  is  elaborate  or  it  is  simple  (it  depends  upon 
the  point  of  view),  and  you  may  call  love  the 
paraphernalia  of  its  wedding-feast  or  you  may 
call  it  more  —  the  Blood  and  Body  of  all  that 
quickens,  a  Transubstantiation  which  all  accept, 
reverently  or  irreverently,  as  the  case  may  be. 

I  can  more  readily  conceive  the  existence  of 
a  central  committee  elected  for  the  purpose  of 
regulating  the  marriages  of  a  community,  than 
of  a  community  satisfied  with  such  a  committee. 
There  is  no  logic  in  social  events.  The  world 
persists  in  not  taking  the  next  step,  and  what 
to  the  social  scout  looked  a  dusty  bypath  may 
prove  to  be  the  highway  of  progress  for  the 
hoboing  millions.  Side  issues  are  constantly 
cropping  up  to  knock  out  the  main  issues  of  the 
stump  orator ;  so  let  us  be  humble.  For  this 
reason  I  refuse  to  discuss  possibilities  in  infinity. 
You  and  I  cannot  have  become  products  of  an 
environment  which  is  not  in  existence.  It  is 
safe  to  suppose  that  our  needs  are  like  those  of 
the  race  and  that  in  us  nothing  is  vestigial  that 
[188] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

is  active  in  others.  You  cannot  have  become  too 
rational  to  love.  The  device  has  not  yet  been 
formed. 

You  think  I  should  take  -your  word  for  it? 
But  why  ?  Have  you  never  found  yourself  in 
the  wrong,  never  disobeyed  your  best  prompt 
ings,  never  meant  to  take  the  good  and  grasped 
the  bad  ?  Is  it  not  possible  that  you  are  not  yet 
awake,  or,  God  pity  you,  that  you  are  hidebound 
in  the  dogmatism  of  your  bit  of  thinking  ? 

It  is  for  the  second  point  of  your  letter  that 
I  called  you  equivocal.  Earlier  in  our  discus 
sion,  I  remember,  you  laid  stress  on  the  fact 
that  love  is  an  instinct  common  to  all  forms  of 
life ;  now  you  go  to  great  lengths  in  order  to 
show  that  it  is  artificial. 

How  do  you  differentiate  between  the  artifi 
cial  and  natural  ?  Surely  a  development  is  not 
artificial  because  it  is  recent !  Surely  man  is  as 
integral  to  life  as  his  progenitors !  When  we 
come  to  civilization,  we  are  face  to  face  with  the 
largest  and  subtlest  thing  in  life,  and  the  civili 
zation  of  human  society  is  not  artificial.  It  is 
the  fulfilment  of  the  nature  of  man,  the  promise 
made  good,  the  career  established,  the  influence 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

sent  out.  A  universe  of  mind-stuff  and  a  civiliz 
ing  force  constantly  causing  change,  for  change 
is  growth,  constantly  compelling  expression  of 
that  change  —  to  conceive  it  is  to  conceive  in 
finitude.  And  the  purpose  ?  Development, 
always  development.  To  that  end  the  individ 
ual  perishes,  to  that  end  the  race  is  conserved, 
to  that  end  the  peril  and  the  sacrifice,  and  the 
agony  of  triumph  in  the  overcharged  heart  at 
its  last  bound.  And  what  is  this  refining  of  the 
type,  this  goal  for  which  we  all  make  with  such 
tragic  directness,  but  the  gaining  in  the  power 
to  love  ?  We  begin  with  love  to  end  with 
greater  love,  and  that  is  progress.  To  write 
the  epic  of  civilization  is  a  task  for  some  giant 
artist  who  shall  combine  in  himself  Homer  and 
Shakespeare,  and  the  work  will  be  a  love  story. 
We  do  not  throw  away  the  grain  and  keep 
the  chaff,  nor  do  we  transmit  the  "  absurdities  " 
and  "  philanderings "  alone.  If  in  the  lover's 
voice  throb  the  voices  of  myriads  of  lovers,  it  is 
because  he  is  stirred  even  as  they.  If  a  ballad 
wakes  a  response  in  him,  it  is  because  its  motif 
has  been  singing  itself  of  its  own  accord  in  his 
heart,  and  its  rhythm  was  the  dream  nightingale 
[190] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

to  which  he  bade  Her  hearken.  Behind  the 
tradition  lives  the  fact.  The  expression  may 
be  ephemeral,  the  song  flat,  the  motto  conven 
tional,  but  the  feeling  which  prompted  it  is 
true.  Else  it  could  not  have  survived.  And  it 
has  more  than  survived.  It  has  grown  with 
growth.  For  centuries  it  lodged  in  the  nature 
of  man,  lulled  in  quiescence,  then,  when  the 
sense  of  recognition  awoke,  back  in  those  won 
drous  young  days,  it  wakened  to  pale  life,  and 
now  the  feeling  is  man's  whole  support,  giving 
him  courage  to  work  and  purpose  to  live. 

But  the  half  brute  of  the  London  slums  kicks 
his  wife  when  she  offends  him  and  knows  noth 
ing  of  love.  Well  for  the  honour  of  love  that  it 
is  so !  The  half  brute  of  the  London  slums  had 
not  food  enough  when  a  child,  and  malnutrition 
is  deadly.  Later,  he  stole  and  lied  in  order  to 
eat,  and  he  was  bullied  and  kicked  for  it  out  of 
human  shape.  The  trick  was  passed  on  to  him. 
The  unfortunate  of  the  London  slums  will  push 
us  all  from  heaven's  gate,  because  we  do  not  do 
battle  with  the  conditions  that  make  him.  It  is 
not  such  as  he  that  should  lead  you  to  scorn 
love,  for  he  is  a  mistake  and  a  crime. 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

In  your  example  of  the  isolated  boy  babe  and 
girl  babe  we  meet  with  a  different  condition. 
The  individual  repeats  the  history  of  the  race, 
and  as  these  have  been  left  out  by  the  civilizing 
forces,  they  revert  to  past  racial  states.  For 
these  it  is  natural  to  live  stolidly  —  is  it  there 
fore  natural  for  us  ?  The  point  I  make  is  that 
our  refinement,  crying  in  us  with  great  voice,  is 
as  much  a  part  of  us  as  are  the  simple  few 
hungers  of  the  racial  infant.  We  are  not  the 
less  natural  for  being  subtle.  And  can  it  not 
be  that  the  face  of  romance  reveals  itself  even 
to  savage  eyes  ?  According  to  the  need  is  the 
power,  and  the  early  man  needs  must  hope  and 
desire ;  he  is  curbed  by  waiting  and  taught  by 
loss  in  the  hunting,  he  is  hungry,  and  he  dreams 
that  he  is  feasting.  This  dream  is  his  romance 
—  a  red  flicker  in  the  dawn,  then  still  the  gray. 
To  suppose  this  is  not  to  be  unscientific,  for 
what  is  true  of  us  must  have  had  a  beginning, 
and  feeling,  as  well  as  being,  cannot  have  been 
spontaneously  generated. 

There  is  an  absolute  gravitation  to  justice  in 
nature.  This  was  the  creed  preached  by  Huxley 
to  Kingsley  a  week  after  his  boy's  death.  Grief 
[192] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

had  turned  the  mind  upon  itself,  and  in  the 
upheaval  he  formulated  a  philosophy  of  faith 
and  joy ! 

Our  reward  is  meted  out  according  to  our 
obedience  to  all  of  the  law,  spiritual  and  physi 
cal.  Nature  keeps  a  ledger  paying  glad  life's 
arrears  each  minute  of  time.  And  the  creed 
rises  to  my  lips  when  I  hear  you  cry  shame  upon 
the  delight  of  love.  It  must  be  good,  this  thing 
which  is  so  fraught  with  joy !  You  brand  it 
sense  delight,  but  all  delight  is  of  the  senses, 
and  Darwin  at  the  conclusion  of  "  The  Descent 
of  Man,"  if  he  was  not  overtaken  by  a  feeling  of 
incompleteness  in  the  work  and  a  consuming 
fever  for  the  further  task,  was  glad  in  a  human 
way,  with  the  senses  and  through  the  emotions. 
Darwin's  supreme  moment  may  have  come  at 
quite  a  different  time.  What  can  we  know  of 
the  moments  of  repletion  that  fall  into  another's 
life  ?  With  Huxley  we  may  only  know  that  our 
hearts  bound  high  when  we  strike  a  chord  of 
harmony  and  prove  ourselves  obedient  to  "  all 
of  the  law,"  and  our  hearts  bound  high  when 
we  love.  It  is  nature's  way  of  showing  her  ap 
proval.  Oh,  the  strength  of  love  and  the  mira- 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

cles  of  its  compensations  !  The  sense  of  be 
coming  that  it  gives,  even  in  its  defeats,  the 
gladness  that  ripples  in  its  sob-strangled 
throat ! 

The  day  for  asceticism  is  gone,  or  shall  we 
say  the  night?  We  are  not  afraid  of  sense 
delights.  We  are  intent  upon  living  on  all  sides 
of  our  natures,  roundly  and  naturally.  You 
have  a  fine  gospel  of  work  and  I  congratulate 
you  upon  it,  but  you  make  no  mention  of  the 
purpose  of  it  all.  It  must  not  be  work  for  work's 
sake.  "  When  I  heard  the  learned  astronomer 
— "  says  Whitman.  Do  you  remember?  He 
caught  in  one  hour  the  whole  majesty,  caught 
to  himself  the  wonder  that  was  unseen  by  the 
watching  astronomers.  Somehow  you  feel  the 
learned  ones  had  made  a  mistake  in  calculating 
so  long  that  they  had  no  time  to  see  with 
personal  eyes  the  glory  of  the  stars,  and  that 
Whitman  had  been  philosopher  and  had  gained 
where  they  failed.  The  inspiration  of  the  poet, 
of  the  painter,  of  the  economist,  and  biologist, 
is  in  the  revelation  which  they  receive  of  what 
to  do  and  why  to  do.  For  this  reason  philoso 
phy,  which  treats  of  the  life  and  works  of  man, 

1^94  ] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO  WAGE 

is  in  the  highest  sense  sociological.  The  gen 
eralizations  of  philosophy  go  to  improve  our 
methods  so  that  we  may  have  greater  proneness 
for  sense  delight  and  greater  possibility  for 
sense  delight.  Why,  what  else  is  there  ?  You 
are  a  poet,  and  you  give  an  unrestorable  day, 
when  the  sun  is  shining  and  the  hills  lie  purple 
in  the  distance,  to  writing  a  sonnet.  If  you  do 
so  merely  to  employ  yourself,  it  must  be  that  the 
wolf  of  despair  is  at  your  being's  door.  You 
have  come  to  the  end,  and  the  sun  and  the  hills 
do  not  matter.  You  and  they  have  parted  com 
pany.  But  if  you  write,  impelled  by  the  wish 
that  others  should  read  and  recognize,  read  and 
remember,  and  grow  to  know  and  feel  better, 
and  perhaps  to  love  the  sun  and  hills  better, 
then  is  yours  a  work  of  love,  and  it  will  be  made 
good  to  you,  so  that  for  the  day  which  you  have 
not  seen,  your  night  shall  be  instinct  with  light. 
And  if  your  labours  are  more  especially  in  the 
service  of  art,  then,  also,  with  each  approach 
toward  expression,  you  are  warmed  through 
with  the  delight  of  achievement. 

Is  my  meaning  quite  dashed  away  by  this  tor 
rent  of  speech  ?     It  is  simply  this  :   Before  we 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

think  we  feel,  and  the  end  of  thinking  is  feeling. 
The  century  of  Voltaire  and  Dr.  Johnson  held 
that  man  is  rational,  the  century  of  James,  Ribot, 
Lange,  and  Wundt  is  thrilled  to  the  heart  with 
the  doctrine  that  first,  last,  and  always  man  is 
emotional.  To  speak  loosely,  the  dimensions  of 
the  human  cosmos  are  feeling,  emotion,  and  sen 
sation. 

Build  your  fine  structures.  We  like  to  see  the 
foundations  laid  well  and  the  thick  walls  go  up. 
Keep  to  your  wizard  inventions.  We  like  to  live 
in  a  magic  world.  And  ah,  the  indomitable 
machines  with  their  austere  promise  of  free  days 
for  weary  hands,  and  ah,  the  locomotives  and 
the  ships  steaming  their  ways  toward  inter 
course,  toward  comity,  toward  fellowship!  We 
like  the  intricacy  and  the  vastness  of  the  world 
in  which  we  live.  But  "  an  unconsidered  life  is 
not  fit  to  be  lived  by  any  man,"  says  Aristotle. 
We  must  consider  the  phenomenon,  civiliza 
tion,  searching  down  for  the  nucleus  of  its 
worth.  We  will  find  that  the  stone  structure 
without  hope  were  a  pitiable  thing,  that  the 
making  of  compacts  and  the  banking  of  capital, 
without  hope,  were  pitiable.  This  hope  that  is 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

the  life  germane,  the  immortal  flash  of  mortality, 
the  most  keenly  human  point  in  all  humanity, 
is  the  hope  for  greater  and  greater  social  happi 
ness.  Our  world  is  an  ever  unfinished  house 
which  we  are  employed  in  building.  If  we  are 
imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the  architect  and  not 
of  the  hod-carrier,  we  will  hope  sweetly  for  the 
work.  The  house  beautiful  will  begin  to  mean 
our  life,  and  each  night  we  will  consult  our  draw 
ings,  looking  to  it  that  on  the  house  built  of  our 
days  the  sun  shall  wester,  and  that  within  shall 
be  intimacy,  and  laughter,  great  speech  and 
close  love,  looking  to  it  that  the  home  be  such 
as  to  better  to-day's  tenant  so  that  he  be  more 
loving  and  lovable  than  the  one  of  yesterday. 

We  are  wrong,  perhaps.  Long  ago  we  were 
no  less  than  now.  When  we  reached  a  hand  in 
the  darkness  and  grasped  that  of  our  fellow,  the 
love  and  the  strongly  frail  human  abandon  were 
no  less.  We  have  not  grown  in  heart's  munifi 
cence,  perhaps.  It  is  one  of  the  illusions  only. 
But  the  hope  is  ours.  For  what  do  you  hope? 

DANE. 


[i97] 


XXVII 

FROM   THE   SAME   TO  THE   SAME 

LONDON, 
July  22,  19—. 

YOUR  birthday,  Herbert,  and  for  greet 
ing  I  state  that  I  walk  your  length  with 
you.    A  truce  to  quarrelling !    It  is  now 
a  year  since  you  informed  me  you  were  going  to 
be  married,  and  since  then  the  gods  have  thun 
dered  their  laughter  at  the  sight  of  two  mutter 
ing  men  who  sat  themselves  on  the  axes  of  earth 
to  dangle  their  legs  into  orbit  vastness.     Chronic 
somnambulists   that   they   are,  they  took  their 
monopolist  way  thither  in  their  sleep. 

I  cannot  tell  you  how  full  of  vagary  the  cor 
respondence  we  have  fallen  into  seems  to  me.  I 
deliberately  attempted  to  write  you  into  passion, 
and  for  months  you  deliberately  continued  to 
convict  yourself  out  of  your  own  mouth,  and  we 
did  not  see  that  it  was  tragic  and  comic  and 
preposterous.  Could  we  personify  this  our  deal- 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

ing,  we  would  do  well  to  call  it  a  kind  of  Caliban. 
And  the  tentacles  we  threw  out,  clawing  at 
everything,  stealing  for  prop  to  our  little  theory 
all  of  man  and  God!  It  is  the  conceit  of  us 
that  I  find  utterly  hopeless  of  grace.  So  I  drop 
my  role  of  omniscience.  I  take  my  form  off 
the  hub,  believing  the  system  will  maintain  its 
gravity  though  I  go  my  private  way,  and  I 
promise  to  let  you  alone.  Forgive  me,  and  God 
bless  you.  Ah,  yes,  and  many  happy  returns  of 
the  day.  All  my  heart  in  the  blessing  and  the 
wish. 

I  did  some  remembering  to-day,  dear  lad. 
When  you  were  born,  I  was  five  years  younger 
than  you  are  now,  yet  I  felt  myself  old.  "  If 
we  were  as  old  as  we  feel,  we  would  die  of  old 
age  at  twenty-one."  My  life  seemed  all  behind 
me,  long,  turbulent,  packed  with  pain,  useless. 
I  spoke  of  myself  as  if  all  were  over.  "  It  had 
been  full  of  purpose,  but  what  came  of  it  ?  A 
few  rhymes  and  a  spoilt  hope."  To  my  morbid 
fancy  your  having  come  to  be  was  a  signal  for 
me  to  go.  I  had  no  thought  of  dying,  yet  I 
accepted  you  as  the  proof  of  my  failure.  In  the 
exacting  eyes  of  the  genius  of  the  race  I  was 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

insolvent.  You  were  not  mine.  I  looked  into 
Time,  and  saw  none  of  me  there. 

Yet  the  letter  I  wrote  to  your  parents  was 
sincere,  —  how  else?  And  that  night  and  the 
next  and  the  next,  I  wrote  "  Gentleman  Adven 
turers,"  which  the  critics  called  the  epitome  of  all 
that  is  balladesque.  One  pitied  the  dead  because 
they  could  go  forth  no  more  on  water  and  under 
sky.  This  poem,  written  in  a  mood  which  be 
neficent  nature  sends  on  the  too-sick  spirit,  has 
served  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  as 
the  complete  and  accepted  catalogue  of  the 
reasons  for  living.  Well,  I  must  not  laugh  at  it. 
It  may  be  true  that  the  passion  of  my  heart 
incarnated  itself  in  it  beyond  the  rest,  that  my 
one  song  sang  itself  out  those  first  three  days  of 
your  life.  If  so,  it  is  true  that  love  is  never 
cheated  of  its  fruit,  and  that  the  joy  which 
might  have  been  for  the  individual  oozes  out  of 
him  to  the  race,  that  the  strength  which  would 
have  settled  upon  itself  in  the  calm  of  satisfied 
hope,  filters  through  him  outwards. 

Good  night,  lad.  My  hand  is  on  your  shoulder 
and  I  am  loath  to  take  it  off.  For  a  while  I 
would  like  what  cannot  be,  to  travel  with  you 
[200] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

the  red-brown  country-roads  fragrant  with  hay, 
to  cross  the  styles  and  knock  upon  the  cabin 
doors,  and  enter  where  sorrow  and  where  glad 
ness  is,  big  with  greeting  and  sure  of  welcome. 
I  have  often  pleased  myself  with  the  fancy  that 
the  outer  aspects  of  life  are  patterned  after  the 
inner,  so  that  in  the  map  of  the  spirit  are  to  be 
found  city  and  country,  wood,  desert,  and  sea, 
so  that  we  know  these  outer  worlds  through 
having  travelled  the  worlds  within.  Though 
I  stay  behind,  my  eyes  can  follow  you  from 
this  night's  landmark  along  the  stretch,  on  to 
the  city  avenues,  up  the  highways,  tracing  the 
twists  of  the  bypaths,  clambering  untrod  trails 
of  wilderness  and  mountain,  on,  on,  till  out  upon 
the  sea. 

In  one  of  the  near  turnings  a  woman  with 
waiting  face  smiles  subtly.  Her  hands  beckon 
you  to  the  tryst.  God  speed,  my  son. 

DANE. 


[201] 


XXVIII 
FROM    HERBERT  WAGE   TO   DANE    KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 

August  6,  19 — . 

AS  I  have  constantly  insisted,  our  differ 
ence  is  temperamental.  The  common 
words  we  lay  hold  of  mean  one  thing  to 
you  and  another  thing  to  me.  I  do  not  equivo 
cate  when  I  say  that  love  is  instinctive,  and  that 
the  latter-day  expression  of  love  is  artificial. 
"  Art,"  as  I  understand  the  term  in  its  broad 
ness,  contradistinguishes  from  nature.  What 
ever  man  contrives  or  devises  is  an  artifice,  a 
thing  of  art  not  of  nature,  and  therefore  artificial. 
As  for  ourselves,  among  animals  we  are  the 
only  real  inventors  and  artificers.  Instead  of 
hair  and  hide,  we  have  soft  skins,  and  we  weave 
cunning  textures  and  wear  wondrous  garments. 
In  cold  weather,  in  place  of  eating  much  fat 
meat,  we  keep  ourselves  warm  by  grate  fires  and 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

steam  heat.  We  cut  up  our  blood-dripping 
meat  chunks  with  pieces  of  iron  hardened  by 
fire  and  sharpened  on  stone,  and  we  eat  fish 
with  a  fork  instead  of  our  fingers.  We  put  a 
roof  over  our  heads  to  keep  out  storm  and  sun 
shine,  sleep  in  pent  rooms,  and  are  afraid  of  the 
good  night  air  and  the  open  sky.  In  short,  we 
are  consummately  artificial. 

As  I  recollect,  I  have  shown  that  the  natural 
expression  of  the  love  instinct  is  bestial  and 
brutal  and  violent.  I  have  shown  how  imagina 
tion  entered  into  the  development  of  the  expres 
sion  of  this  love  instinct  till  it  became  romantic. 
And,  in  turn,  I  have  shown  how  artificial  was 
the  romantic  expression  of  this  love  instinct,  by 
isolating  a  boy  babe  and  a  girl  babe  in  a  natural 
state  wherein  they  expressed  their  love  instinct 
bestially  and  brutally  and  violently.  As  you 
say,  they  have  simply  been  "left  out  by  the 
civilizing  force."  And  this  civilizing,  or  social 
izing  force  is  simply  the  sum  of  our  many 
inventions.  The  isolated  pair  merely  expressed 
their  instincts  in  the  unartificial,  natural  way. 
They  had  not  been  taught  a  certain  particular 
fashion  in  which  to  express  those  instincts  as 


KEMPTON-WACE    LETTERS 

have  you  and  I  and  all  artificial  beings  been 
taught. 

As  Mr.  Finck  has  said,  "Not  till  Dante's 
'  Vita  Nuova '  appeared  was  the  gospel  of  modern 
love  —  the  romantic  adoration  of  a  maiden  by  a 
youth  —  revealed  for  the  first  time  in  definite 
language." 

Dante,  and  the  men  who  foreshadowed  and 
followed  him,  were  inventors.  They  introduced 
an  artifice  for  protracting  one  of  our  most  vital 
pleasures.  Well,  they  succeeded.  And  what  of 
it  ?  There  are  artifices  and  artifices,  and  some 
are  better  than  others.  The  automobile  is  a 
more  cunning  artifice  than  the  ox-cart,  the 
subway  than  a  palanquin.  Devices  come  and 
devices  go.  Change  is  the  essence  of  progress. 
All  is  development.  The  end  of  rapes  and 
romances  is  the  same  —  perpetuation.  There 
may  be  head  love  as  well  as  heart  love.  And  in 
the  time  to  come,  when  the  brain  ceases  to  be 
the  servant  of  the  belly,  the  head  the  lackey 
of  the  heart,  in  that  time,  stirpiculture,  which 
is  scientific  perpetuation,  will  take  the  place  of 
romantic  love.  And  in  the  present  there  may 
be  men  ready  for  that  time.  There  must  be  a 
[204] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

beginning,  else  would  we  still  be  jolting  in 
ox-carts.  And  I  am  ready  for  that  time  now. 

You  say,  "  Love  is  of  a  piece  with  life,  like 
hunger,  like  joy,  like  death."  Quite  true.  And 
civilization  is  merely  the  expression  of  life  —  a 
variform  utterance  which  includes  love,  and 
hunger,  and  joy,  and  death.  Else  what  is  this 
civilization  for?  How  did  it  happen  to  be? 
And  I  answer  :  It  is  the  sum  of  the  many  inven 
tions  we  have  made  to  aid  us  in  our  pursuit  of 
life  and  love  and  joy.  It  helps  us  to  live  more 
abundantly,  to  love  more  fruitfully,  to  joy  more 
intelligently,  and  to  get  grim  old  Death  by  his 
knotty  throat  and  hold  him  at  arm's  length  as 
long  as  possible. 

I  stated  that  "  all  progress  consists  in  the 
arbitrary  alteration,  by  human  efforts  and  de 
vices,  of  the  normal  course  of  nature."  This 
sociological  concept  comes  inevitably  into  accord 
with  my  philosophy  of  love.  It  is  the  law  of 
development,  and  all  things  of  human  life  (which 
includes  love)  come  inside  of  it.  Wherefore, 
certainly,  I  am  not  outside  our  province  when  I 
demand  of  you  to  bring  your  philosophy  of  love 
into  like  accord. 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

Incidentally,  I  will  state  that  I  have  fallen  in 
love.  I  have  grown  feverish  with  desire,  gone 
mad  with  dumb  yearning.  I  have  felt  my  in 
tellect  lose  dominion,  and  learned  that  I  was 
only  a  garmented  beast,  for  all  the  many  inven 
tions  very  like  the  other  beasts  ungarmented. 
Nay,  I  am  no  cold-blooded  theorist,  no  thick- 
hided  dogmatist ;  nor  am  I  a  chastely  simple 
young  man  mooning  in  virginal  innocence.  My 
generalizations  have  been  tempered  in  the  heats 
of  passion,  and  what  I  know  I  know,  and  with 
out  hearsay. 

I  have  seen  a  learned  man,  drunk  with  wine, 
interrogate  the  new  states  of  consciousness  of 
his  unwonted  condition,  and  so  doing,  gain  a 
more  comprehensive  psychological  insight.  So 
I,  with  my  loves.  I  was  impelled  toward  the 
women  I  shall  presently  particularize.  I  asked 
why  the  impulsion.  I  reasoned  to  see  if  there 
were  a  difference  between  these  illicit  passions 
of  mine  and  the  licit  passions  of  my  respectable 
and  respected  friends.  And  I  found  no  differ 
ence.  Separated  from  codes  and  conventions, 
shorn  of  imagination,  divested  of  romance, 
stripped  naked  down  to  the  core  of  the  matter, 
[206] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

it  was  old  Mother  Nature  crying  through  us, 
every  man  and  woman  of  us,  for  progeny.  Her 
one  unceasing  and  eternal  cry  —  PROGENY  ! 
PROGENY !  PROGENY ! 

Just  as  little  girls,  instinctively  foreshadowing 
motherhood,  play  with  dolls,  so  children  feel 
vague  sex  promptings,  and  in  sweetly  ridiculous 
ways  love  and  quarrel  and  make  up  after  the 
approved  fashion  of  lovers.  You  loved  little 
girls  in  pigtails  and  pinafores.  We  all  did.  And 
in  our  lives  there  is  nothing  fairer  and  more 
joyful  to  look  back  upon  than  those  same  little 
pigtails  and  pinafores.  But  I  shall  pass  the 
child  loves  by,  and  instance  first  my  calf  love. 

Do  you  remember  the  incident  of  the  torn 
jacket  and  the  blackened  eyes  ?  —  so  inexplicable 
at  the  time.  Try  as  you  would,  neither  you  nor 
Waring  could  get  anything  out  of  me.  Oh, 
believe  me,  it  was  tragic !  I  was  fifteen.  Fif 
teen,  and  athrill  with  a  strange  new  pulse ; 
flushed,  as  the  dawn,  with  the  promise  of  day. 
And,  of  course,  I  thought  it  was  the  day,  that  I 
loved  as  a  man  loved,  and  that  no  man  ever 
loved  more.  Well,  well,  I  laugh  now.  I  was 
only  fifteen  —  a  young  calf  who  went  out  and 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

butted  heads  with  another  calf  in  the  back 
pasture. 

She  was  a  demure  little  coquette,  Celia  Ge 
nome,  Professor  Genome's  daughter,  if  you  will 
recollect.  "  Ah,"  I  hear  you  remonstrate,  "  but 
she  was  a  woman."  Just  so.  Fifteen  and 
twenty-two  is  usually  the  way  of  calf  loves.  I 
invested  her  with  all  the  glow  and  colour  of  first 
youth,  and  in  her  presence  became  a  changed 
being.  I  blushed  if  she  looked  at  me  ;  trembled 
at  the  touch  of  her  hand  or  the  scent  of  her  hair. 
To  be  in  her  presence  was  to  be  closeted  with 
the  awfulness  and  splendour  of  God.  I  read  im 
mortality  in  her  eyes.  A  smile  from  her  blinded 
me,  a  gentle  word  or  caressing  look  and  I  went 
faint  and  dizzy,  and  I  was  content  to  lurk  in 
some  corner  and  gaze  upon  her  secretly  with  all 
my  soul.  And  I  took  long,  solitary  walks,  with 
book  of  verse  beneath  my  arm,  and  learned  to 
love  as  lovers  had  loved  before  me. 

Sufficient  romance  was  engendered  for  me  to 
pass  more  than  one  night  worshipping  beneath 
her  window.  I  mooned  and  sentimentalized 
and  fell  into  a  gentle  melancholy,  until  you  and 
Waring  began  to  worry  over  an  early  decline,  to 

[208] 


FROM   WAGE   TO    KEMPTON 

consult  specialists,  and  by  trick  and  stratagem 
to  entice  me  into  eating  more  and  reading  less. 
But  she  married  —  ah,  I  have  forgotten  whom. 
Anyway,  she  married,  and  there  was  trouble 
about  it,  too,  and  I  bade  adieu  to  love  forever. 

Then  came  the  love  of  my  whelpage.  I  was 
twenty,  and  she  a  mad,  wanton  creature,  won 
derful  and  unmoral  and  filled  with  life  to  the 
brim.  My  blood  pounds  hot  even  now  as  I  con 
jure  her  up.  The  ungarmented  beast,  my  dear 
Dane,  the  great  primordial  ungarmented  beast, 
mighty  to  procreate,  indomitable  in  battle,  in 
vincible  in  love.  Love  ?  Do  I  not  know  it  ? 
Can  I  not  understand  how  that  splendid  fighting 
animal,  Antony,  quartered  the  globe  with  his 
sword  and  pillowed  his  head  between  the  slim 
breasts  of  Egyptian  Cleopatra  while  that  hard- 
won  world  crashed  to  wrack  and  ruin  ? 

As  I  say,  this  was  the  love  of  my  whelpage, 
and  it  was  vigorous,  masterful,  masculine.  There 
was  no  sentimentalizing,  no  fond  foolishness  of 
youth ;  nor  was  there  that  cool,  calm  poise  which 
comes  of  the  calculation  and  discretion  of  age. 
Man  and  woman,  we  were  in  full  tide,  strong, 
simple,  and  elemental.  Life  rioted  in  our  veins ; 
[209] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

we  were  a-bubble  with  the  ferment ;  and  it  is 
out  of  such  abundance  that  Mother  Nature  has 
always  exacted  her  progeny.  From  the  strictly 
emotional  and  naturalistic  viewpoint,  I  must  con 
sider  it,  even  now,  the  perfect  love.  But  it  was 
decreed  that  I  should  develop  into  an  intellectual 
animal,  and  be  something  more  than  a  mere  un 
conscious  puppet  of  the  reproductive  forces.  So 
head  mastered  heart,  and  I  laid  the  grip  of  my 
will  over  the  passion  and  went  my  way. 

And  then  came  another  man's  wife,  a  proud- 
breasted  woman,  the  perfect  mother,  made  pre 
eminently  to  know  the  lip  clasp  of  a  child.  You 
know  the  kind,  the  type.  "The  mothers  of 
men,"  I  call  them.  And  so  long  as  there  are 
such  women  on  this  earth,  that  long  may  we 
keep  faith  in  the  breed  of  men.  The  wanton 
was  the  Mate  Woman,  but  this  was  the  Mother 
Woman,  the  last  and  highest  and  holiest  in 
the  hierarchy  of  life.  In  her  all  criteria  were 
satisfied,  and  I  reasoned  my  need  of  her. 

And  by  this  I  take  it  that  I  was  passing  out 
of  my  blind  puppetdom.  I  was  becoming  a 
conscious  selective  factor  in  the  scheme  of 
reproduction,  choosing  a  mate,  not  in  the  lust 

[210] 


FROM   WAGE   TO    KEMPTON 

of  my  eyes,  but  in  the  desire  of  my  fatherhood. 
Oh,  Dane,  she  was  glorious,  but  she  was  another 
man's  wife.  Had  I  been  living  unartificially,  in 
a  state  of  nature,  I  would  certainly  have  brained 
her  husband  (a  really  splendid  fellow),  and 
dragged  her  off  with  me  shameless  under  the 
sky.  Or  had  her  husband  not  been  a  man,  or 
had  he  been  but  half  a  man,  I  doubt  not  that 
I  would  have  wrested  her  from  him.  As  it 
was,  I  yearned  dumbly  and  observed  the  con 
ventions. 

Nor  are   these   experiences   heart   soils   and 
smirches.     They  have  educated  me,  fitted   me 
for  that  which  is  yet  to  be.     And  I  have  writ 
ten  of  them  to  show  you  that  I  am  no  closet 
naturalist,  that  I  speak   authoritatively  out   of 
adequate    understanding.      Since    the    end    of 
love,  when  all  is  said   and   done,  is   progeny ; 
and  since  the  love  of  to-day  is  crude  and  waste 
ful  ;  as  an  inventor  and  artificer  I  take  it  upcpri 
myself    to   substitute   reasoned    foresight    and  \ 
selection  for  the  short-sighted  and   blundering 
selection    of    Mother    Nature.      What    would    / 
you  ?     The  old  dame  would  have  made  a  mess  ' 
of  it  had  I  let   her  have  her  way.     She  tried 

[211] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

hard  to  mate  me  with  the  wanton,  for  it  was 
not  her  method  to  look  into  the  future  to  see 
if  a  better  mother  for  my  progeny  awaited  me. 

And  now  comes  Hester.  I  approach  her,  not 
with  the  milk-and-water  ardours  of  first  youth, 
nor  with  the  lusty  love  madness  of  young  man 
hood,  but  as  an  intellectual  man,  seeking  for 
self  and  mate  the  ripe  and  rounded  manhood 
and  womanhood  which  comes  only  through 
the  having  of  children  —  children  which  must 
be  properly  born  and  bred.  In  this  way,  and 
in  this  way  only,  can  we  fully  express  ourselves 
and  the  life  that  is  in  us.  We  shall  utter  our 
selves  in  the  finest  speech  in  the  world,  and,  our 
children  being  properly  born  and  bred,  it  shall 
be  in  the  finest  terms  of  the  finest  speech  in  the 
world.  To  do  this  is  to  have  lived. 

HERBERT. 


[212] 


XXIX 

FROM  DANE  KEMPTON  TO  HERBERT  WAGE 

LONDON, 

3  A  QUEEN'S  ROAD,  CHELSEA,  S.W., 
August  26,  19 — . 

YOU  insist  that  the  question  is  not  on  the 
value  of  love  but  on  the  significance  of 
the  artificial.  Be  that  as  it  may.  To 
me  love  is  integral  with  life,  and  to  speak  of 
civilizing  it  away,  seems,  in  point  of  fact,  as 
preposterous  and  as  anomalous  as  a  Hamletless 
play  of  Hamlet.  You  forget  that  in  developing 
you  carry  yourself  along ;  you  change,  yet  you 
remain  racial  and  natural.  Else  there  were  too 
many  missing  links  in  all  your  departments. 
We  read  Homer  to-day  —  telling  proof  that 
the  chain  of  sympathy  stretches  unbroken 
through  epochs  of  inventions  and  discoveries 
and  revolutions.  Truism  that  it  is,  it  presents 
itself  with  particular  force  at  this  stage. 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

With  how  much  force  ?  We  stand  in  danger 
of  exaggerating  these  vociferous  thoughts.  This 
question  of  naturalness  as  opposed  to  artificiality 
is  not  immediately  pertinent  to  our  problem,  nor 
is  the  matter  of  optimism  and  pessimism,  nor 
the  biologic  idea  of  survival.  We  should  have 
looked  more  to  the  way  of  love  in  the  lives  of 
men  and  women  and  become  historians  of  the 
method  and  conduct  of  the  force.  There 
would  have  been  less  confusion.  So  I  write, 
"Be  that  as  it  may,"  and  go  back  to  more  imme 
diate  considerations.  And  yet  we  were  not  far 
wrong !  The  little  flower  in  the  crannied  wall 
could  tell  what  God  and  man  is.  This  is  of 
all  thoughts  the  most  charged  with  truth. 
Let  me  understand  one  of  your  conclusions,  root 
and  all,  and  all  in  all,  and  such  is  the  gracious 
plan  of  oneness  in  the  branching  and  leafage 
and  uptowering,  that  I  must  know  and  name  the 
tree.  Your  winding  bypath,  could  I  but  follow 
it  to  the  end,  must  bring  me  to  the  highway 
of  your  thought,  every  step  tell-tale  of  the 
journey's  destination.  But  soon  I  shall  be 
with  you  (the  fifth  of  next  month,  after  all ; 
the  arrangements  as  planned).  Then  we  will 

["4] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

begin  to  know  each  other,  and  we  will  no  longer 
be  tormented  by  the  irksomeness  of  writing. 
Therefore,  until  easier  and  more  fluent  times, 
to  the  heart  of  the  subject  straight. 

Your  love-affairs  —  how  well  you  have  out 
grown  them  and  how  ably  you  criticise  them  ! 
They  have  not  withstood  the  test  of  time,  for 
you  bear  them  no  loyalty.  Calfdom  and  whelp- 
age,  vagaries  of  adolescence,  you  call  them. 
You  do  not  show  them  much  respect !  For  this 
reason  your  examples  lose  what  weight  they 
might  have  borne.  They  belong  so  wholly  to 
the  past,  they  are  mere  wraiths  of  bygone  stir 
rings,  they  cannot  clothe  you  with  knowledge  of 
love.  Cold  now,  what  boots  it  that  you  have 
been  afire  ?  You  cannot  be  taught  by  what  is 
utterly  over. 

You  are  catching  what  I  aim  to  say,  I  hope, 
for  I  aim  to  say  much.  Put  it  that  instead  of  a 
girl  whom  you  idealized,  it  was  a  principle  — 
some  scheme  of  reform  which  you  honoured  with 
all  the  passion  of  young  hope  and  dream,  and 
which  knit  your  alert  being  into  a  Laocoon  of 
striving.  Your  maturer  eyes  see  this  ideal 
impossible  and  narrow.  In  no  wise  can  it  satisfy 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

your  bolder  reach  and  larger  sympathy.  But 
you  do  not  laugh  at  what  has  been.  If  you 
strove  for  it  sincerely  at  any  time,  no  matter  how 
remote,  you  could  never  again  deride  it.  Because 
once  you  loved  it  you  are  eternal  keeper  of  the 
key  to  its  good.  What  has  been  wholly  yours 
you  never  quite  desert.  Nothing  has  remained 
to  you  of  your  love-affairs,  therefore  your  recital 
of  them  is  empty  of  meaning.  If  you  were 
in  love  to-day,  and  because  of  your  philos 
ophy  you  determined  to  do  battle  with  your 
feeling,  your  experience  would  be  more  authori 
tative. 

You  have  known  love,  and  having  known  you 
refuse  it.  Henceforth,  it  must  be  reason  and 
not  feeling.  "What  is  your  objection?"  you 
ask.  This  merely,  that  the  thing  cannot  be. 
Marriage  to  be  marriage  must  come  through 
love,  through  the  reddest  romance  of  love, 
through  fire  of  the  spirit,  yes,  even  through  the 
love  of  calfdom  and  whelpage.  Else  it  is  a 
mockery.  Where  is  the  woman  of  character 
who  would  sell  the  be-all  and  end-all  of  her 
existence  for  a  neat  catalogue  of  possible  advan 
tages?  Where  is  the  man  who  would  frankly 

[ai6] 


FROM  ,KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

and  without  embellishment  dare  make  such 
proposal  ?  You  point  to  yourself.  But  you 
have  never  explained  yourself  to  Hester,  and 
even  to  me  you  are  embellishing  the  matter 
with  all  the  might  in  your  persuasive  pen. 

The  ardours  of  calfdom  and  whelpage  that  you 
smile  at  I  would  have  you  throb  with.  You 
underrate  the  firstlings  of  the  heart,  the  rose 
and  white  blossoming,  the  call  upon  the  senses 
and  the  readiness  to  respond  and  to  fulfil,  to 
give  and  to  take,  to  be  and  make  happy  —  the 
great  pride  and  utter  abandon  which  is  young 
love.  At  fifteen,  fortunately  for  the  develop 
ment  of  mind  and  character,  hope  is  placed 
where  hope  must  pine.  Love,  then,  is  doomed 
to  be  tragic.  The  youth  "attains  to  be  denied." 
But  he  sounds  his  depth.  Thereafter,  he  knows 
what  to  expect  of  himself.  He  has  a  precedent. 
After  this  he  will  count  it  a  sin  to  forget,  and 
to  accept  the  solace  of  mediocrity.  In  this  lies 
the  value  of  the  tragedy. 

I  sometimes  think  that  whatever  is  youngest 

is  best.     It  is  the  young  that,  timid  and  bold, 

pay  greatest  reverence  to  knowledge,  receiving 

without  chill  of  prejudice  and  shameful  cowardice 

[217] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

of  quibbling  the  brave  new  thought.  Wisdom 
may  be  of  age,  but  passion  for  scholarship, 
trail-breaking,  and  hardy  prospecting  in  the 
treasure  mines  of  research,  is  of  young  pioneer- 
hood  alone.  It  is  a  youth  who  dares  be  radical, 
who  dares,  in  splendid  largess,  build  mistake 
upon  mistake,  bleeding  his  life  out  in  service. 
And  it  is  a  youth,  standing  tiptoe  upon  the 
earth,  now  waiting  in  unperturbed  ease,  now 
searching  with  unbridled  zeal,  who  is  lover  and 
mystic.  "The  best  is  yet  to  be,"  says  Rabbi 
Ben  Ezra,  "  the  last  of  life,  for  which  the  first  is 
made."  Yes,  the  last  of  life  will  be  good,  but 
only  if  it  is  like  youth,  beating  with  its  pulse 
and  instinct  with  its  spirit. 

The  unhappy  youth  is  left  on  the  battle-field 
but  not  to  die.  The  sword-thrusts  challenge 
him  to  put  forth  greater  strength  in  fiercer  wars. 
He  learns  hard  and  well. 

Indeed,  I  cannot  leave  this  subject  of  first 
love.  How  do  you  know  it  was  not  good  for 
you  to  love  as  you  did  ?  It  is  strange  you  should 
resolve  to  love  no  more  because  at  one  time  you 
loved  deeply  enough  almost  to  remain  in  love. 
It  cannot  be  that  you  have  grown  old  and  that 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

nature  is  resolving  for  you.  You  tell  me  of  your 
experiences  in  order  that  I  may  be  convinced 
that  you  know  whereof  you  speak  and  I  listen 
in  wonder.  Your  conclusions  are  unwonted. 

Then  something  was  amiss,  for  you  have  out 
grown  and  forgotten,  but  how  is  it  with  you  in  the 
present  when  your  indifference  waits  not  upon 
time  ?  You  approach  your  future  wife  clothed  in 
indifference  as  in  mail,  and  you  do  violence.  How 
can  I  show  you  ?  I  speak  as  I  would  to  a  child  to 
whom  it  is  necessary  to  explain  that  it  is  bad 
to  abandon  an  education.  Life  is  a  school,  and 
to  me  it  seems  that  you  are  about  to  resign  long 
before  diploma  and  degree,  so  I  interpose.  I 
was  taught  by  first  love,  and  I  honour  that  time 
beyond  any  other.  I  was  Ellen's.  I  have  been 
lonely.  For  the  mere  human  need,  for  the  sake 
of  that  which  to  the  lonely  is  very  dear,  I  have 
thought  of  marriage,  but  I  remembered  and  I 
refused  to  do  violence  to  myself  remembering. 
Long  ago  my  standard  was  established.  I  learned 
how  deeply  I  could  feel,  and  I  refuse  to  acknow 
ledge  myself  bankrupt,  I  refuse  to  approach  an 
honourable  human  being  with  less  than  my  all. 
Until  my  soul  flower  out  again,  until  suns  flame 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

about  my  head  as  in  that  dear  yoretime,  I  shall 
keep  teeming  with  dreams  and  make  no  affront. 
I  who  have  seen  love  dare  not  live  without  love. 

I  would  not  give  in  to  fate,  Herbert.  I  would 
assert  my  manhood.  I  would  abide  in  the 
strength  of  the  first  output,  going  with  the  flush 
of  the  first  glow  into  the  gloom.  I  would  spurn 
the  calm  of  compromise  and  mediocrity  and 
register  a  high  claim.  I  would  keep  the  peace 
with  Romance  and  fly  her  colours  to  the  last. 

You  have  lived  ?  It  is  well,  and  it  might  have 
been  better,  but  do  not  give  over  and  talk  of 
stirpiculture.  You  are  not  wiser  than  the  laws 
which  made  you. 

DANE. 


[MO] 


XXX 

FROM  HERBERT  WAGE  TO  DANE  KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 

September  18,  19 — . 

HOW  abominable  I  must  seem  to  you, 
Dane !  For  certainly  a  creature  is 
abominable  that  lays  rough  hands  on 
one's  dearest  possessions.  I  doubt  if  even  you 
realize  how  deeply  you  are  stirred  by  my  con 
duct  toward  love.  My  marriage  with  Hester, 
considering  the  quality  and  degree  of  the  con 
tracting  parties,  must  appear  as  terrible  to  you 
as  the  sodomies  that  caused  God's  ancient  wrath 
to  destroy  cities.  You  see,  I  take  your  side  for 
the  time,  see  with  your  eyes,  live  your  thoughts, 
surfer  what  you  suffer  ;  and  then  I  become  my 
self  again  and  steel  myself  to  continue  in  what 
I  think  is  the  right. 

After  all,  mine  is  the  harder  part.     There  are 

[221] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

easier  tasks  than  those  of  the  illusion-shatterer. 
That  which  is  established  is  hard  to  overthrow. 
It  has  the  nine  points  of  possession,  and  woe  to 
him  who  attempts  its  disestablishment ;  for  it 
will  persist  till  it  be  drowned  and  washed  away 
in  the  blood  of  the  reformers  and  radicals. 

Love  is  a  convention.  Men  and  women  are 
attached  to  it  as  they  are  attached  to  material 
things,  as  a  king  is  attached  to  his  crown  or 
an  old  family  to  its  ancestral  home.  We  have 
all  been  led  to  believe  that  love  is  splendid  and 
wonderful,  and  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world, 
and  it  pains  us  to  part  with  it.  Faith,  we  will 
not  part  with  it.  The  man  who  would  bid  us 
put  it  by  is  a  knave  and  a  fool,  a  vile,  degraded 
wretch,  who  will  receive  pardon  neither  in  this 
world  nor  the  next. 

This  is  nothing  new.  It  is  the  attitude  of 
the  established  whenever  its  conventions  are 
attacked.  It  was  the  attitude  of  the  Jew  toward 
Christ,  of  the  Roman  toward  the  Christian,  of 
the  Christian  toward  the  infidel  and  the  heretic. 
And  it  is  sincere  and  natural.  All  things  desire 
to  endure,  and  they  die  hard.  Love  will  die 
hard,  as  died  the  idolatries  of  our  forefathers, 
[222] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

the  geocentric  theory  of  the  universe,  and  the 
divine  right  of  kings. 

So,  I  say,  the  rancour  and  warmth  of  the  estab 
lished  when  attacked  is  sincere.  The  world  is 
mastered  by  the  convention  of  love,  and  when 
one  profanes  love's  Holy  of  Holies  the  world  is 
unutterably  shocked  and  hurt.  Love  is  a  thing 
for  lovers  only.  It  must  not  be  approached  by 
the  sacrilegious  scientist.  Let  him  keep  to  his 
physics  and  chemistry,  things  definite  and  solid 
and  gross.  Love  is  for  ardent  speculation,  not 
laboratory  analysis.  Love  is  (as  the  reverend 
prior  and  the  learned  bodies  told  brother  Lippo 
of  man's  soul) :  — 

"  —  a  fire,  smoke  ...  no,  it's  not  .  .  . 
It's  vapour  done  up  like«a  new-born  babe  — 
(In  that  shape  when  you  die  it  leaves  your  mouth) 
It's  .  .  .  well,  what  matters  talking,  it's  the  soul ! " 

I  thoroughly  understand  the  popular  senti 
mental  repugnance  to  a  scientific  discussion  of 
love.  Because  I  dissect  love,  and  weigh  and 
calculate,  it  is  denied  that  I  am  capable  of  ex 
periencing  love.  It  is  too  radiant  and  glorious 
a  thing  for  a  dull  clod  like  me  to  know.  And 

["3] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

because  I  cannot  experience  love  and  be  made 
mad  by  it,  my  fitness  to  describe  its  phenomena 
is  likewise  denied.  Only  the  lover  may  describe 
love.  And  only  the  lunatic,  I  suppose,  may 
compose  a  medical  brochure  on  insanity. 

HERBERT. 


[224] 


XXXI 

FROM    DANE   KEMPTON    TO    HERBERT  WAGE 

LONDON, 
October  7,  19 — . 

IT  is  true  that  you  have  a  hard  task  before 
you,  but  it  is  not  because  you  are  fighting 
convention  and  shattering  illusion ;  it  is 
because  you  are  assailing  a  good.  Love  has 
never  acquired  the  prestige  of  the  established, 
and  the  run  of  marriages  are  prompted  by 
advantage,  routine,  or  passion.  So  you  are  no 
innovator,  Herbert.  The  idolatry  of  love  will 
not  be  overthrown  by  a  drawn  battle  between 
those  of  the  Faith  and  those  of  the  Reformation. 
Nothing  so  spectacular  awaits  us. 

I  have  a  friend  who  has  undertaken  to  trans 
late  "  Inferno "  into  English,  keeping  to  the 
terza  rima.  "It  is  like  climbing  the  Matter- 
horn,"  he  says  gravely.  "  I  get  to  places  where 
I  feel  I  can  go  neither  forward  nor  back.  The 
Q  [225] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

task  is  prodigious."  And  it  is.  But  whom  will 
it  concern  if  he  succeeds  in  going  forward  ? 
There  are  few  who  will  read  his  book.  The 
translation  is  of  more  importance  to  the  trans 
lator  than  to  any  one  else.  Yet  the  professor's 
magnum  opus  confers  a  degree  upon  us  all. 
Because  a  standard  is  upheld  and  a  man  is 
willing  and  able  to  climb  a  Matterhorn  of 
thought,  we  can  ourselves  stride  forward  with 
better  courage.  The  work  will  be  an  output 
of  heroism,  and  it  will  ennoble  even  those  who 
will  not  know  of  it.- 

I  have  another  friend  who  ruined  his  life  for 
love,  so  says  the  world  that  you  think  steeped  in 
the  idolatry  of  love.  A  priest,  who  by  a  few 
strokes  was  able  to  quell  in  America  a  strong 
and  bitter  movement,  a  gifted  orator,  a  man 
of  giant  powers,  and  who  was  won  away  at  the 
age  of  forty  from  his  career  by  a  mere  girl. 
The  girl  planned  nothing.  She  found  herself  a 
force  in  his  life  almost  despite  herself.  The 
mere  fact  that  she  lived  was  enough  to  wrest 
this  Titan  from  the  arms  of  the  Church.  He 
told  me  that  she  criticised  him  with  the  direct 
ness  of  a  simple  nature,  and  that  he  came  to 

[226] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

understand  her  truths  better  than  she  herself. 
I  think  she  must  have  loved  him  at  first,  but  she 
did  not  go  to  him  when  all  grew  calm.  I  wish 
it  could  have  been  otherwise,  and  that  she  could 
have  brought  him  a  woman's  heart. 

The  priest,  as  the  professor,  is  a  hero.  Both 
made  great  outputs. 

There  are  few  who  can  live  like  these.  But 
because  there  are  a  few  who  can  love  and  work, 
the  game  is  saved.  And  because  there  are  a 
few  of  these,  we  must  ever  quarrel  with  the 
many  who  are  not  like  them. 

"  Give  all  to  love ; 
Obey  thy  heart ; 
Friends,  kindred,  days, 
Estate,  good  fame, 
Plans,  credit,  and  the  Muse,  — 
Nothing  refuse." 

Does  this  really  seem  such  poor  philosophy 
to  you  ?  And  when,  Herbert,  will  you  marry  ? 

DANE  KEMPTON. 


[227] 


XXXII 

FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

STANFORD  UNIVERSITY, 
November  20,  19 — . 

HESTER  met  me  at  the  station,  and  we 
walked  through  the  Arboretum  to  her 
home  on  the  campus.  Then  followed 
an  evening  together  in  the  dormitory  parlour.  I 
have  but  just  left  her.  Her  face  was  tumultuously 
joyous  when  I  murmured  my  "  At  last !  "  Her 
tearful  excitement  was  like  Barbara's.  You  did 
not  tell  me  she  is  so  young.  You  must  have 
made  her  feel  our  closeness,  or  she  may  have 
found  a  bit  of  my  verse  that  all  expressed  her, 
and  presto,  the  whole-hearted  one  is  my  friend. 
Her  poet  is  now  her  father,  brother,  comrade, 
—  what  she  chooses,  and  all  she  chooses. 

At  one  time,  before  we  were  well  out  of  the 
Arboretum,  our  eyes  met,  and  there  was  some 
thing  so  sad  and  mild  and  strange  in  the  burn 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

of  her  gaze  that  I  felt  her  frank  spirit  was  un 
veiling  itself  in  an  utterness  of  speech.  But  I 
have  become  too  much  spoilt  by  mere  length  of 
living  to  be  able  to  remember  back  and  recog 
nize  what  young  eyes  mean  when  they  look  like 
that.  From  London  to  Palo  Alto  is  a  short  trip, 
if  at  the  end  of  it  you  meet  a  Hester.  Yet  I 
am  sad.  The  mood  crept  on  me  the  moment 
we  grew  aware  that  evening  had  come,  and  we 
stopped  a  little  in  front  of  the  arch  to  observe 
the  night-look  of  the  foot-hills.  Lights  had  be 
gun  to  appear  in  the  corridors  of  the  quadrangle, 
and  here  and  there  in  a  professor's  office,  while 
Roble  and  Encina  looked  like  lit-up  ferries. 
There  was  a  spell  of  mystery  and  promise 
in  the  quiet  which  was  deeper  for  being  sug 
gestive  of  the  seething  student-life  just  subsided. 
It  was  a  silence  that  seemed  to  echo  with  bells 
and  recitations,  and  babble  and  laughter  and 
heartache.  I  fell  into  thought.  One  genera 
tion  cometh  and  another  passeth  away.  There 
is  no  respite.  March  with  time  and  find  death, 
mayhap,  before  it  has  found  you.  As  years  ago 
the  flamelet  of  the  street-lamp,  so  now  these  out 
posts  of  the  colossal  embryo  of  a  world  derided 
[229] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

me  and  seemed  to  point  me  out  and  away.  The 
evening  grew  chill  with  "  a  greeting  in  which  no 
kindness  is." 

"  Your  coming  has  been  announced  in  every 
class,  and  your  lecture  is  on  the  bulletin-boards. 
After  that,  can  you  be  depressed  ? " 

The  light  words  were  spoken  low,  as  if  doubt 
ful  whether  they  could  be  taken  in  good  part, 
and  they  came  with  something  that  was  like 
music.  Was  it  the  voice  or  some  inexplicable 
feeling?  I  turned  in  wonder.  Her  head  was 
raised,  and  in  the  indistinctness  I  caught  that 
sweet  look  of  hers  which  besought  me,  and  which 
I  answered  without  knowing  to  what  question. 

I  owe  you  a  great  happiness.     Good  night. 

DANE  KEMPTON. 


[230] 


XXXIII 
FROM   THE   SAME    TO   THE   SAME 

STANFORD  UNIVERSITY, 
Wednesday. 

LAST  night  I  delivered   my  address   to 
the  student  body.     Behold  the  chapel 
crowded  to  the  doors,  aisles  and  win 
dow-seats  crammed,  and  faces  peering  in  from 
without,  those  of  boys  and  girls  who  had  perched 
themselves  on  the  outer  sills.     A  student  audi 
ence  is  at  the  same  time  the  most  critical  and 
the  most  generous.     I  spoke  on  Literature  and 
Democracy. 

Hester  approved  my  effort.  "  How  does  it 
feel  to  be  great  ? "  she  laughed.  "  How  does 
it  feel  to  be  cruel?"  I  retorted.  "  But  think, 
Mr.  Kempton,  when  you  visited  the  English 
classes  you  were  just  so  much  text  for  us.  It 
should  count  us  a  unit  merely  to  have  seen 
you." 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

A  memory  stood  up  and  had  its  revenge 
on  me.  It  taunted  me  for  the  half-expressed 
thought,  for  the  fled  insight,  for  the  swelling 
note  that  midmost  broke.  Praise  the  artist,  and 
he  feels  himself  betrayer.  Blear-eyed,  the  poet 
recalls  the  poem's  sunrise,  straightens  himself 
with  the  old  pride,  is  held  again  by  the  splendour 
which  forecasts  the  about-to-be-steadier  glory 
of  day,  and  even  with  the  recalling  he  shrinks 
together  before  what  he  knows  was  a  false 
dawn.  There  was  never  a  day.  The  song's 
note  never  sang  itself  at  all. 

Hester  looked  up  with  that  wistfulness  which 
so  draws  me.  Her  look  said :  "  I  pity  you.  I 
wish  you  were  as  happy  as  I."  And  a  thought 
leaped  out  in  answer  to  her  look  which  would 
have  smote  her  had  it  spoken.  It  was,  "  You, 
too,  are  awakened  by  a  false  dawning."  Why 
is  she  so  sure  of  herself  and  of  you  ?  Is  she 
sure  ?  The  puny  bit  of  writing  had  a  vigorous 
rising.  The  ragged  author  was  clad  in  it  as  in 
ermine.  So  the  seeming  love  makes  a  strong 
call,  for  a  while  holding  the  girl  intent  upon  a 
splendour  of  unfolding,  her  nature  roused,  her 
being  expectant.  But  later,  for  poet  and  lover, 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

the  failure  and  the  waste  !  Were  it  otherwise 
with  your  feeling  for  your  betrothed,  the  com 
parison  would  not  hold. 

Hester  does  not  think  these  things,  and  she 
is  beautiful  and  happy. 

Yours  devotedly, 

DANE  KEMPTON. 


[233] 


XXXIV 

FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

STANFORD  UNIVERSITY, 
Saturday. 

HER  happiness  wrung  it  from  me.  Before 
I  could  intervene,  the  question  asked 
itself,  "  How  will  it  be  with  you  in 
after  years  ? " 

Straight  the  answer  came,  "There  will  be 
Herbert." 

Hester  is  proud.  To-night  I  saw  it  in  the  lift 
of  her  chin,  in  the  set  of  the  neck,  in  the  brill 
iance  of  her  cheek.  She  knows  herself  endowed. 
So  when  she  prattled  with  abandon  of  all  you 
both  meant  to  do  and  be,  her  form  erect  before 
me,  her  hands  eloquent  with  excitement,  her 
voice  pleading  for  the  right  to  her  very  con 
scious  self-esteem,  I  asked  her  to  look  still 
further.  Further  she  saw  you,  and  was  content. 

That  was  before  dinner.  Later  we  were 
walking.  "  I  have  a  friend  in  Orion,"  she  said. 

[234] 


FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

The  witchery  of  starshine  played  in  her  eyes 
and  about  her  mouth.  Where  were  you,  Her 
bert  ?  This  night  will  never  return.  Yet  what 
has  been  was  for  you  —  the  more,  perhaps,  that 
you  seemed  away.  So  it  is  with  lovers.  She 
thinks  you  love  her. 

"  I  am  sorry  for  your  mood,"  she  said.  "You 
are  holding  yourself  to  account  these  days  in  a 
way  I  know."  Then  she  spoke,  and  I  learned 
with  new  heaviness  of  spirit  that  she  does  know 
the  way  of  it.  You  never  thought  Hester  had 
much  to  struggle  with  ? 

"  I  am  difficult,"  she  said.  And  again,  "  There 
are  times  when  no  power  can  hold  me."  Then 
she  quoted  Browning  :  — 

11  Already  how  am  I  so  far 
Out  of  that  minute  ?     Must  I  go 
Still  like  the  thistle-ball,  no  bar, 
Onward,  whenever  light  winds  blow, 
Fixed  by  no  friendly  star  ? " 

"  Are  you  unhappy,  Hester  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  Yes,  but  with  no  more  reason  than  you  for 
your  unhappiness.  Since  you  have  come  here, 
you  have  renewed  your  demands  upon  yourself. 
You  wish  to  go  to  school  with  the  youngest  and 

[2353 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

find  you  cannot.  You  suffer  because  more  seems 
behind  you  than  before."  Her  voice  rose  as  if 
she  were  fighting  tears.  It  was  different  with 
her,  I  told  her.  Nothing  was  behind  her. 

"You  test  your  work  and  I  test  my  love. 
When  you  are  sad,  it  is  because  the  soul  of  the 
song  spent  itself  to  gain  body  —  "  She  did  not 
finish.  Why  is  she  sad  ?  Because  the  soul  of 
her  love  is  narrower  than  she  hoped  ? 

On  our  return  from  our  walk  she  sank  on 
the  seat  under  the  '95  oak.  "  Did  you  think 
I  meant  I  was  always  unhappy  ? "  she  asked. 
Her  words  seem  always  to  say  more  than  her 
meaning.  She  imparts  something  of  her  own 
elaborateness  to  them.  I  laughed. 

"  How  could  I  with  the  *  Herbert  is '  in  my 
ears  ? "  Then  her  love  became  voluble.  I  for 
got  what  I  knew  of  your  theories  and  grew 
aflame  with  her  ardour.  I  anticipated  as  largely 
as  she.  She  was  again  possessed  by  her  hopes. 

There,  under  the  shadow  of  the  quadrangle 
which  her  young  strides  measured,  she  spoke  of 
what,  with  you  in  her  life,  the  years  must  be. 
Beyond  words  you  are  blessed,  Herbert.  But 
if  she  mistakes  ?  D.  K. 


XXXV 

FROM  THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME 

STANFORD  UNIVERSITY, 
November  27,  19 — . 

BE  outspoken!     What  will  happen  I  can 
only  surmise,  but  you  must  tell  her  what 
she  is  to  you.     Set  her  right. 
This  is  the  fourth  letter  in  seven  days  about 
Hester.     I  am  endeavouring  to  make  you  ac 
quainted  with  her.     I  had  no  need  if  you  loved 
her.      How   she   loves   you!      Yet   she   thinks 
that  your  calm  is  depth,  your  silence  prayer. 
Her  pride  protects  her,  but  she  strains  for  the 
word  which  does  not   come.      She  has   never 
been  quite  sure,   and   I   thank    God   for   that. 
Hester   has   been   fearing   somewhat,   and   she 
has  been  doubting,  and  it  is  this  that  may  save 
her  when  the  night  sets  in  and  the  storm  breaks 
over  her  head. 

You,  too,  are  thankful  that  her  instincts  served 
[237] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

her  true  and  that  she  never  quite  accepted  the 
gift  that  seemed  to  have  been  proffered  ? 

You  have  a  right  to  demand  the  reason  for 
my  renewed  attack.  It  is  because  I  have  learned 
the  strength  of  her  love.  "You  are  blessed 
beyond  words,"  I  said  two  days  ago,  but  as  you 
reject  the  blessing,  Hester  must  know  it  and  you 
must  tell  her.  Herbert,  I  am  your  friend. 

DANE  KEMPTON. 


XXXVI 

FROM  HERBERT  WAGE  TO  DANE  KEMPTON 

THE  RIDGE, 

BERKELEY,  CALIFORNIA, 
November  29,  19 — . 

WHAT  a  flutter  of  letters !  And  what 
a  fluttery  Dane  Kempton  it  is !  The 
wine  of  our  western  sunshine  has 
bitten  into  your  blood  and  you  are  grown  over- 
warm.  I  am  glad  that  you  and  Hester  have 
found  each  other  so  quickly  and  intimately; 
glad  that  you  are  under  her  charm,  as  I  know 
her  to  be  under  yours ;  but  I  am  not  glad  when 
you  spell  yourself  into  her  and  write  out  your 
heart's  forebodings  on  her  heart.  For  you  are 
strangely  morbid,  and  you  are  certainly  guilty 
of  reading  your  own  doubts  and  fears  into  her 
unspoken  and  unguessed  thoughts. 

Believe  me,  rather  than  the  soul  of  her  love 
seeming  narrower  than  she  hopes,  the  truth  is 
she  gives  her  love  little  thought  at  all.  She  is 

[239] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

too  busy  —  and  too  sensible.  Like  me,  she  has 
not  the  time.  We  are  workers,  not  dreamers  ; 
and  the  minutes  are  too  full  for  us  to  lavish 
them  on  an  eternal  weighing  and  measuring  of 
heart  throbs. 

Besides,  Hester  is  too  large  for  that  sort  of 
stuff.  She  is  the  last  woman  in  the  world  to 
peer  down  at  the  scales  to  see  if  she  is  getting 
full  value.  We  leave  that  to  the  lesser  creatures, 
who  spend  their  courtship  loudly  protesting  how 
unutterable,  immeasurable,  and  inextinguishable 
is  their  love,  as  though,  forsooth,  each  dreaded 
lest  the  other  deem  it  a  bad  bargain.  We  do 
not  bargain  and  charier  over  our  feelings,  Hester 
and  I.  Surely  you  mistake,  and  stir  storms 
in  teacups. 

"  Be  outspoken,"  you  say.  If  my  conscience 
were  not  clear,  I  should  be  troubled  by  that. 
As  it  is,  what  have  I  hidden  ?  What  sharp 
business  have  I  driven  ?  And  who  is  it  that 
cries  "  cheated  !  "  ?  Be  outspoken  —  about  what, 
pray  ? 

You  bid  me  tell  her  what  she  is  to  me. 
Which  is  to  bid  me  tell  her  what  she  already 
knows,  to  tell  her  that  she  is  the  Mother 
[240] 


FROM   WAGE  TO   KEMPTON 

Woman ;  that  of  all  women  she  is  dearest  to 
me;  that  of  all  the  walks  of  life,  that  one  is 
pleasantest  wherein  I  may  walk  with  her ;  that 
with  her  I  shall  find  the  supreme  expression  of 
myself  and  the  life  that  is  in  me;  that  in  all 
this  I  honour  her  in  the  finest,  loftiest  fashion 
that  man  can  honour  woman.  Tell  her  this, 
Dane.  By  all  means  tell  her. 

"Ah,  I  do  not  mean  that,"  I  hear  you  say. 
Well,  let  me  tell  you  what  you  mean,  in  my  own 
way,  and  bid  you  tell  her  for  me.  In  the  lust 
of  my  eyes  she  is  nothing  to  me.  She  is  not  a 
mere  sense  delight,  a  toy  for  the  debauchery  of 
my  intellect  and  the  enthronement  of  emotion. 
She  is  not  the  woman  to  make  my  pulse  go 
fevered  and  me  go  mad.  Nor  is  she  the  woman 
to  make  me  forget  my  manhood  and  pride,  to 
tumble  me  down  doddering  at  her  feet  and  gib 
bering  like  an  ape.  She  is  not  the  woman  to 
put  my  thoughts  out  of  joint  and  the  world  out 
of  gear,  and  so  to  befuddle  and  make  me  drunk 
with  the  beast  that  is  in  me,  that  I  am  ready  to 
sacrifice  truth,  honesty,  duty,  and  purpose  for 
the  sake  of  possession.  She  is  not  the  woman 
to  ever  make  me  swamp  honour  and  poise  and 
R  [  241  ] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

right  conduct  in  the  Vortex  of  blind  sex  passion. 
She  is  not  the  woman  to  arouse  in  me  such  un 
controlled  desire  that  for  gratification  I  would 
do  one  ill  deed,  or  put  the  slightest  hurt  upon 
the  least  of  human  creatures.  She  is  not  the 
most  beautiful  woman  God  Almighty  ever 
planted  on  his  footstool.  (There  have  been 
and  are  many  women  as  true  and  pure  and 
noble.)  She  is  not  the  woman  for  whose  be- 
dazzlement  I  must  advertise  the  value  of  my 
goods  by  sweating  sonnets  to  her,  or  shivering 
serenades  at  her,  or  perpetrating  follies  for  her. 
In  short,  she  is  not  anything  to  me  that  the 
woman  of  conventional  love  is  to  the  man. 

And  again,  what  is  she  to  me  ?  She  is  my 
other  self,  as  it  were,  my  good  comrade  and 
fellow- worker  and  joy-sharer.  With  her  woman 
she  complements  my  man  and  makes  us  one, 
and  this  in  the  highest  civilized  sense  of  union. 
She  is  to  me  the  culmination  of  the  thousands 
of  generations  of  women.  It  took  civilization 
to  make  her,  as  it  takes  civilization  to  make  our 
marriage.  She  is  to  me  the  partner  in  a  mar 
riage  of  the  gods,  for  we  become  gods,  we  half 
brutes,  when  we  muzzle  the  beast  and  are  not 

[242] 


FROM   WAGE  TO    KEMPTON 

menaced  by  his  growls.     Under  heaven  she  is 
my  wife  and  the  mother  of  my  children. 

Tell  her,  then,  tell  her  all  you  wish,  you  dear 
old  fluttery,  mothery  poet  father  —  as  though  it 
made  any  difference. 

HERBERT. 


[»43] 


XXXVII 
.PROM  DANE    KEMPTON   TO   HERBERT   WAGE 

STANFORD  UNIVERSITY, 
December  3,  19 — . 

NOT  three  weeks  ago  you  were  sitting 
opposite  me  and  speaking  of  Hester. 
You  admitted  many  things  that  night, 
•amongst  them  that  the  girl  never  carried  you  off 
your  feet.  You  stated  over  again  with  precision 
all  you  had  written.  You  betrothed  yourself, 
not  because  Hester  is  different  from  everybody 
else  in  the  world,  but  because  she  is  like.  You 
took  her  for  what  is  typical  in  her,  not  for  what 
is  individual.  You  preferred  to  walk  toward 
her  before  your  steps  were  impelled,  because 
you  feared  that  impulsion  would  preclude 
rational  choice.  With  the  hope  of  out-trick 
ing  nature,  you  reached  for  Hester  Stebbins, 
in  order  that  there  might  be  a  wall  between 
your  heart's  fancy  and  yourself,  should  your 
ieart  become  rebellious.  I  was  to  understand 

[244] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

that  this  is  the  new  school,  that  so  live  the  mas 
ters  of  matter  and  of  self. 

And  as  you  spoke,  I  wondered  about  the 
woman  Hester  and  the  form  of  love-making 
which  existed  between  you,  and  whether  she 
was  simple  and  without  any  charm  despite  her 
culture  and  her  gift  of  song.  "  She  either  loves 
him  too  well  to  know  or  to  have  the  strength  to 
care,  or  she  is,  like  him,  of  the  new  school,"  I 
thought.  I  sat  and  watched  you,  noting  your 
youth,  surprised  by  the  scorn  in  your  eyes  and 
the  sadness  on  your  lips.  You  seemed  hopeless 
and  helpless.  I  closed  my  eyes.  "What  has 
he  left  himself  ? "  I  kept  asking.  "  How  will  he 
tread  '  The  paths  gray  heads  abhor '  ? "  My  own 
head  bowed  itself  as  before  an  irreparable  loss. 
I  had  rejoined  the  child  of  my  care  only  to  find 
him  blasted  as  by  grief,  the  first  sunshine  smit 
ten  from  his  face  and  his  heart  weighted.  One 
word,  one  ray  lighting  your  looks  in  a  wonted 
way,  one  uncontrolled  movement  of  the  hand, 
one  little  silence  following  the  mention  of  her, 
would  have  led  me  to  believe  that  I  had  not 
understood  and  that  all  was  well.  The  night 
grew  old  with  your  plans  and  analyses.  We 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

parted  with  a  sense  of  shame  upon  us  that  we 
should  have  written  and  spoken  so  long  and 
with  such  heat,  and  to  such  little  purpose. 

You  do  not  see  how  this  answers  your  last 
letter,  I  will  tell  you.  It  shows  you  that  you 
have  explained  yourself  fully  the  night  we 
spoke  face  to  face. 

You  say  that  Hester  is  the  woman  to  comple 
ment  your  man.  This  sounds  like  a  lover,  only 
I  happen  to  know  that  she  is  not  the  irresistible 
woman.  I  found  it  out  quite  by  accident  —  a 
few  words  dropped  in  a  letter,  a  corroboration 
of  the  fact  and  further  committal,  a  protracted 
defence  of  your  position,  running  through  a 
correspondence  of  over  a  year,  and,  finally,  a 
face-to-face  declaration.  What  boots  it  now 
that  you  write  prettily  ?  You  do  not  love  Hester. 
You  want  her  to  mother  your  children,  and  you 
install  her  in  your  life  for  the  purpose  before 
the  need. 

Love  is  not  lust,  and  it  is  good.  The  irre 
sistible  marriage,  alone,  is  the  right  one.  Upon 
it,  alone,  does  the  sacrament  rest.  The  chivalry 
of  your  last  letter  refers  less  to  the  girl  than 
to  your  own  ends.  It  is  not  because  Hester 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

is  what  she  is,  that  "  of  all  the  walks  in  life  that 
one  is  pleasantest  wherein  you  may  walk  with 
her,"  but  because  that  walk  is  the  one  you  choose 
beyond  any  other  for  your  wife  to  follow.  The 
mother  woman  is  legion,  and  you  refuse  to 
specialize. 

Hester  does  not  peer  down  at  the  scales  to  see 
if  she  is  getting  full  value,  yet  she  does  look  to 
her  dignity,  and,  being  poor,  will  not  account 
herself  rich.  Hester  has  felt  since  you  made 
known  to  her  that  you  wished  her  to  be  yours, 
that  she  counted  punily  in  your  scheme,  that  you 
placed  little  of  yourself  in  charge  of  her.  She 
loved  you  and  avowed  it,  but  she  has  never  been 
happy.  The  tragedy  of  love  is  not  (what  it  is 
thought  to  be)  the  unreciprocated  love,  but  the 
meagerly  returned  love.  It  is  better  to  be  re 
jected,  equal  turned  from  equal,  than  to  be  held 
with  slim  desire  for  slight  purpose.  Can  you 
see  this,  Herbert?  You  are  hurting  the  girl's 
life.  She  will  ask  for  what  you  withhold,  though 
not  a  word  rise  to  her  lips;  will  thirst  for  it 
through  the  years,  will  herself  grow  cramped 
with  your  denial  till  her  own  love  seem  a  thing 
of  dream,  unstable  and  vague  and  illusive.  And 

[247] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

all  the  time  you  are  gentle.  You  are  devoted  to 
her  interests,  furthering  her  happiness  to  the  best 
in  your  power;  but  your  power  cannot  touch 
her  happiness.  It  is  not  what  you  do  ;  it  is  the 
motive  to  your  acts,  and  Hester  would  know 
that  she  has  left  you  unmoved.  You  respect 
the  function  of  motherhood,  but  you  do  not 
love  Hester.  Tell  her  this,  and  prevent  her 
from  entering  a  union  in  which  she  must  feel 
herself  half  useful,  half  wifely,  half  happy,  and 
therefore  all  unhappy. 

It  is  not  Hester's  fault  that  you  cannot  love 
her,  and  perhaps  it  is  not  her  misfortune.  There 
is  no  need  for  panic.  Of  two  persons,  one  lov 
ing  and  one  loath,  the  indifferent  one  is  in  the 
right.  Can  a  tree  defend  itself  from  the  hewer's 
axe  ?  What  would  it  avail  it,  then,  to  feel  pain 
at  the  blows  ?  It  is  beyond  our  control  to  love 
or  not  to  love,  and  no  effort  that  we  may  put 
forth  can  draw  love  to  us  when  it  is  denied.  It 
does  not  avail  us  to  suffer  from  unrequited 
love. 

This  which  I  have  just  said  is  an  article  of 
faith  which  the  doctrine  of  experience  often 
contradicts,  for  there  may  be  mistake,  and  the 
[248] 


FROM    KEMPTON   TO   WAGE 

one  who  does  not  love  may  be  in  the  wrong.  If 
only  you  could  wait  to  see  the  beauty  which  is 
she  before  you  call  her !  A  year  later  and  Hester 
may  flower  for  you  in  a  passionate  blossoming ; 
her  face  may  challenge  you  to  live.  A  year 
later  and  you  may  find  that  she  is  indeed  the 
woman  to  guide  you  and  to  follow  you ;  her 
voice  a  song,  her  eyes  a  light  in  the  day.  As 
yet,  you  have  not  gauged  her,  and  you  would 
put  her  to  small  uses.  Stand  aside,  dear  Her- 
bert.  It  will  be  better. 

I  have  played  a  surly  part.  I  may  be  accused 
of  having  been  to  you  both  a  Dmitri  Roudin  and 
an  lago.  I  beg  you  to  believe  that  it  has  not 
been  easy  for  me.  I  have  uttered  the  earnest 
word,  have  driven  you  on  by  the  goad  of  friend 
ship,  which  drives  far.  I  looked  upon  the  days 
that  came  tripping  toward  you  out  of  the  blue- 
white  horizon  of  time  and  saw  them  gray  for  a 
dear  woman,  gray  and  silent  as  the  tomb  over 
a  dead  love,  and  heavy  hearted  for  a  man  wha 
is  my  son. 

Ever  wholly  yours, 

DANE  KEMPTON. 
[249] 


XXXVIII 
FROM  HESTER  STEBBINS  TO  HERBERT  WAGE 

STANFORD  UNIVERSITY, 
December  15,  19 — . 

OVER  and  ended.     It  shall  be  as  I  said 
last  night.     Herbert,  there  is  no  call 
for  anger ;  believe  me,  there  is  not.    I 
am  doing  what  I  cannot  help  doing.     You  have 
not  changed,  but  my  faith  in  you  has,  and  I  can 
not  pretend  to  a  happiness  I  do  not  feel. 

Oh,  but  I  laugh,  my  very  dear  one,  I  laugh 
that  I  could  seem  to  choose  to  wrest  myself  from 
you.  Did  you  at  one  time  love  me  ?  That  morn 
ing  of  wild  sunshine  when  you  took  my  hand 
and  asked  me  to  be  your  wife  seems  very  long 
ago.  I  should  have  understood  —  the  blame  is 
all  mine  —  I  should  have  known  you  did  not  love 
me,  I  should  have  been  filled  with  anger  and 
shame  instead  of  happiness.  The  blame  is  all 
mine. 

[»$o] 


FROM   STEBBINS  TO   WAGE 

Last  night,  while  you  were  speaking,  I  was 
standing  in  the  window  wondering  what  all  the 
trouble  was  about.  I  could  afford  to  be  calm 
since  I  knew  I  was  not  hurting  you  very  deeply. 
At  most  I  was  disappointing  a  very  self-suffi 
cient  man.  How  do  women  find  courage,  O 
God,  to  take  from  men  who  love  them  the  love 
they  gave  ?  No  such  ordeal  mine ! 

Farewell,  Herbert     Let  us  think  calmly  of 
each  other  since  we  have  helped  each  other  for 
so  long  a  stretch  of  life.     Farewell,  dear. 
Always  your  friend, 

HESTER  STEBBINS. 


XXXIX 

FROM  HESTER  STEBBINS  TO  DANE  KEMPTON 

STANFORD  UNIVERSITY, 
December  18,  19 — . 

HERBERT  has  analyzed  the  situation 
and  has  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that 
my  dissatisfaction  arises  in  an  inor 
dinate  desire  for  happiness.  You  should  not 
care  so  much  about  yourself,  he  says.  Poor, 
dear,  young  Herbert !  He  is  very  young  and 
cannot  as  yet  conceive  how  much  there  is  about 
oneself  that  demands  care.  I  thought  it  out 
in  the  hills  to-day.  It  was  gray  and  there  was 
a  fitful  wind.  What  is  this  selfishness  but  a 
prompting  to  make  much  of  life  ?  You  and 
I  and  people  of  our  kind  are  old  before  our 
time,  that  is  the  reason  we  are  not  reckless. 
Our  dreams  mature  us.  I  was  a  mere  girl 
when  Herbert  said  he  wished  to  marry  me,  but 
I  was  old  enough  to  grasp  the  full  meaning 
of  the  pact,  as  he  could  not  grasp  it.  In  a 

[252] 


FROM    STEBBINS   TO    KEMPTON 

moment  I  had  travelled  my  way  to  the  grave  and 
back.  I  looked  at  the  sheer,  quick  clouds  that 
flitted  past  the  blue,  and  I  felt  that  I  had  caught 
up  with  life ;  I  had  overtaken  the  wonders  that 
hung  in  the  sky  of  my  dreaming.  Then  I  looked 
at  him  and  the  sunshine  got  in  my  face  and 
made  me  laugh  (or  cry) —  I  was  so  more  than 
happy,  being  so  much  too  sure  of  his  need  of  me. 
I  am  glad  I  walked  to-day.  The  view  from 
the  hills  was  beautiful.  (You  see  I  am  not  un 
happy  ! )  I  stood  on  a  rock  and  looked  about 
me,  thinking  of  you,  of  Barbara,  —  I  feel  I  know 
her, —  and  of  Herbert.  He  and  I  had  often 
come  to  these  spots.  Oh,  the  hungry  memories  ! 
Yet  what  were  we  but  a  young  man  and  a  young 
woman  who,  without  being  battered  into  apathy 
by  misfortune,  without  being  wearied  or  ill,  were 
taking  each  other  for  better  or  for  worse  because 
they  seemed  compatible  ?  We  were  doing  just 
that,  to  Herbert's  certain  knowledge !  I  failed 
him  ;  he  hoped  for  more  complaisance.  Marriage 
is  a  hazard,  Mr.  Kempton,  confess  it  is,  and  a 
man  does  much  when  he  binds  himself  to  make 
a  woman  the  mother  of  his  children  —  nay,  the 
grandmother  of  theirs,  even  that.  What  else 

[253] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

and  what  more  ?  I  would  never  have  been 
wholly  in  my  husband's  life,  comrade  and  fellow 
to  it.  Herbert  knew  this  clearly,  and  I  vaguely, 
but  I  acted  with  clearness  on  my  vagueness. 
It  was  hard  to  do.  It  has  left  me  breathless 
and  a  little  afraid  to  be  myself, — as  if  I  had 
killed  a  dear  thing,  —  and  tearful,  too,  and 
spasmodic  for  your  sympathy  and  sanction. 

I  told  him  that  for  a  long  time  I  did  not 
understand,  supposing  myself  beloved  and  de 
sired  and  chosen  for  him  by  God,  thinking 
he  yearned  for  the  subtlety  and  mystery  of 
me,  thinking  all  of  him  needed  me  and  cleaved 
earths  and  parted  seas  to  come  to  me.  Later, 
when  I  became  oppressed  by  a  lack  and  was 
made  hear  the  stillness  that  followed  my  un- 
echoed  words,  I  became  grave  and  still  myself. 
He  had  unloved  me,  I  said,  and  I  waited. 
Something  seemed  pending,  and  meanwhile  I 
could  love !  I  made  much  of  every  word  of  com 
fort  that  he  dropped  me,  and  dwelt  with  hope  on 
the  future.  All  this  I  told  Herbert  the  night 
when  I  explained,  and  he  turned  pale.  "You 
people  fly  away  with  yourselves.  I  cannot  fol 
low  you.  What  is  wrong,  Hester  ? "  He  smiled 


FROM    STEBBINS   TO   KEMPTON 

in  his  distress.  Yet  was  there  in  his  softness 
an  imperiousness,  commanding  me  be  other  than 
I  am,  forbidding  me  the  right  to  crave  in  secret 
what  I  had  made  bold  to  ask  for  openly.  His 
man  was  stronger  than  my  woman,  and  I  leapt 
to  him  again.  "My  husband,"  I  whispered,  my 
hands  in  his.  This,  even  after  I  understood, 
dearest  Mr.  Kempton. 

It  is  a  sorry  tangle.  If  only  one  could  suit 
feeling  to  theory  !  It  is  not  for  a  theory  that  I 
refuse  to  be  Herbert's  wife.  Yet  if  I  loved  him 
enough,  I  could  give  up  love  itself  for  him.  He 
hinted  it,  looking  as  from  a  distance  at  rne  in 
my  attitude  of  protest  and  restraint.  If  I  loved 
him  enough,  I  could  forego  love  itself  for  him. 
Somewhere  there  is  a  fault,  it  would  seem,  some 
where  in  my  abandon  is  restraint,  in  my  love, 
self-seeking.  Remorse  overcame  me  just  as  he 
was  about  to  leave,  and  I  schooled  myself  to 
think  that  there  had  been  no  affront,  that  it 
honours  a  woman  to  be  wanted  no  matter  for 
what  end,  that  every  use  is  a  noble  use,  that  we 
die  the  same,  loved  or  used.  If  Herbert  Wace 
wants  a  wife  and  thinks  me  fitting,  why,  it  is 
well.  I  thought  all  this  and  aged  as  I  thought. 
[255] 


KEMPTON-WACE   LETTERS 

Nevertheless,  my  hand  did  not  put  itself  out  a 
second  time  to  detain  the  man  who  had  forced 
me  to  face  this. 

There  is  a  youth  here  who  loves  me.  If 
Herbert's  face  could  shine  like  his  for  one  hour, 
I  believe  I  would  be  happier  than  I  have  ever 
been.  And  it  would  not  spoil  that  happiness 
if  this  love  were  toward  another  than  myself. 
Say  you  believe  me.  You  must  know  it  of  me 
that  before  everything  else  in  the  world  I  pray 
that  knowledge  of  love  come  to  the  man  over 
whom  the  love  of  my  girlhood  was  spilled. 

Do  you  ask  what  is  left  me,  dear  friend  ? 
Work  and  tears  and  the  intact  dream.  Believe 
me,  I  am  not  pitiable. 

HESTER. 


[256] 


THE  FOUR  FEATHERS 

By  A.  E.  W.  MASON 

Author  of  "  The  Courtship  of  Morrice  Buckler" 

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" ( The  Four  Feathers '  is  a  novel  of  no  ordinary  type ;  it  stands 
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season.  It  is  an  ordinary  formula  of  praise  to  say  that  the  author 
has  a  grip  of  his  subject ;  it  is  seldom  that,  as  in  this  case,  the  author 
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ance.  .  .  .  For  a  book  such  as  this  the  reader  can  only  be  truly 
thankful,  hoping  that  the  author  may  long  continue  thus  to  give  us 
of  his  best."  —  The  London  Guardian. 

"  Mr.  Mason  is  too  good  a  writer  to  be  thoroughly  appreciated  by 
the  rank  and  file  of  novel  readers.  But  there  was,  in  the  book 
quoted,  that  eerie  quality  which  was  the  distinguishing  trait  of 
Stevenson's  books,  and  there  was  in  addition  to  this  a  compelling 
directness  of  movement  which  not  even  Stevenson  ever  attained." 

—  St.  Louis  Globe  Democrat. 

"The  book  is  out  of  the  common  run  of  present-day  fiction, 
welcome,  above  all,  for  a  refreshing  note  of  sterling  manliness,  of  the 
loyalty  of  men  of  honor  toward  each  other,  for  its  interpretation  of 
the  fine  meaning  of  the  old  English  expression,  '  a  soldier  and  a 
gentleman.' " — N.  Y.  Mail  and  Express. 

"  To  those  to  whom  The  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta  suggests  the 
quintessence  of  cruel  imprisonment,  the  description  of  The  House 
of  Stone  at  Omdurman  in  A.  E.  W.  Mason's  'The  Four  Feathers' 
cannot  fail  to  appeal  as  a  far  more  terrible  place  of  incarceration. 
.  .  .  From  beginning  to  end  the  books  holds  one's  keenest  interest. 
It  is  carefully,  even  daintily  written  in  parts,  and  woven  with  it  is  a 
thread  of  touching  romance."  —  Ar.  Y.  Evening  Post. 


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THE   VIRGINIAN 

A   HORSEMAN   OF   THE   PLAINS 

By  OWEN    WISTER 

Author  of  "Lia  McLean,"  "  U.  S.  Grant:  a  Biography,"  etc. 

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Wister.  .  .  .  There  is  a  breeziness  about  this  book,  a  buoyancy,  a  spirit  of 
virility,  a  combination  of  serious  purpose  and  genuine  humor  such  as  can 
be  seldom  found."  —  The  Commercial  Advertiser. 

"  There  is  not  a  page  in  Mr.  Wister's  new  book  which  is  not  interesting. 
This  is  its  first  great  merit,  that  it  arouses  the  sympathy  of  the  reader  and 
holds  him  absorbed  and  amused  to  the  end.  It  does  a  great  deal  more 
for  him.  .  .  .  Whoever  reads  the  first  page  will  find  it  next  to  impossible 
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the  fairest,  fiercest,  strongest,  tenderest  heroine  that  ever  woke  up  a  jaded 
novel  reader  and  made  him  realize  that  life  will  be  worth  living  so  long  as 
the  writers  of  fiction  create  her  like.  .  .  .  The  story  has  brains,  '  go,' 
virility,  gumption,  and  originality." — The  Boston  Herald. 

"  Dorothy  is  a  fascinating  character,  whose  womanly  whims  and  cun 
ning  ways  in  dealing  with  her  manly,  honest  lover  and  her  wrathful  father 
are  cleverly  portrayed.  The  interest  is  maintained  to  the  end.  Some 
might  call  Dorothy  a  vixen,  but  she  is  of  that  rare  and  ravishing  kind  who 
have  tried  (and  satisfied)  men's  souls  from  the  days  of  Mother  Eve  to  the 
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.  .  .  Mr.  Crawford  will,  we  think,  be  held  to  have  scored  a  new  and 
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"  In  '  Cecilia '  Mr.  Crawford  takes  us  once  more  into  the  Roman 
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